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D&D offers a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {