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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM 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 (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. 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 beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, 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 setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology 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 {