🔗 Share this article

Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

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 took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against 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 direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse 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 celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {