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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, 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 compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, 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 tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {