D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”
Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.
A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, 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 beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.
It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?
Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.
It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.
The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.
Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {
