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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious 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 angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue 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 made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures 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 “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting 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 eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {