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D&D presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known 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 massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {