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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range 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. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, 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 setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {