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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. 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 etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar 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 massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {