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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks 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 divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {