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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (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 specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, 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 support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal 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 Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour 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 angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed 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 creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel 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 little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {