🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, 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. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included 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 known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {