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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

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 smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {