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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore 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 infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {