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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. 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 Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {