🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, 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 little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {