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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” 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 (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass 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.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight 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 kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “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 assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {