D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”
Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.
Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; 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 be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. 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 greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.
It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.
To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?
Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.
It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. 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. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.
The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.
Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {
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