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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” 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 Hebrew and Christian 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 fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers 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 engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {