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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially 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 “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented 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 tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging 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 understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness 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 weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {