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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials 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 appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold 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 the angel Lumalia and 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 underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret 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 after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {