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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show 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 setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass 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 notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal 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 interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {