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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, 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 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free 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 start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague 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 still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight 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 “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 powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {