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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded 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 beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply 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, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {