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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, 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 less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {