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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass 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.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like 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 even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, 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 have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {