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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced 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, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated 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 appears that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {