🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially 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 magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious 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 look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics 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 stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot 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 after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {