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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of 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 canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {