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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks 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 Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall 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 support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen 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 compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity 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 Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {