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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks 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 divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’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 fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. 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 {