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D&D presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious 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 underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past 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 were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {