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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride 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 notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {