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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine 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 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast 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 interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience 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 “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying 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 mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {