D&D provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”
Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify 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.
Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.
It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.
Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, 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 perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?
Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.
It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.
The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.
Sure, this may just 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 screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {
Elara is a passionate writer and photographer who shares insights on creativity and mindful living through engaging storytelling.
