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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {