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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. 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 celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable 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 purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated entire countries. 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 seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {