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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince 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 (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {