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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content 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 wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms 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 belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials 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 Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, 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 who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {