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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include 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 markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging 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 online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {