🔗 Share this article

D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, 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 D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {