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D&D provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. 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 D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings 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 few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of 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 celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions 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 have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate 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) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint 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 arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {