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D&D provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels 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, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made 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 setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel 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 of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {