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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good 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 thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general 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 god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy 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 appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {