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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious 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 underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, 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 etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, 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 screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {