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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “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 the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore 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 interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. 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 narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM 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 formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {