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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements 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 due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle 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 direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped 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 celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble 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 later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {