🔗 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 craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince 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 (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, 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 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle 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 close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

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

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {