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D&D offers a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons 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 editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history 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 celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding 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 called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {