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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen 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 Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary 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 broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {