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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for 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 defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {