🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take 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 D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen 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.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) 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

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign 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 obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {