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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels 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 magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. 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 engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 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 obsessions. 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 conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {