Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, 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 great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”
The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.
Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.
In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.
It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded 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 designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.
Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master 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, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?
Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.
It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.
The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.
Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {
A seasoned gaming enthusiast with over a decade of experience in lottery analysis and casino reviews.
