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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “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 Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal 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. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing 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 Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {