🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared 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 hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. 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 close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound 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. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity 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 gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {