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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good 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 unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions 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 still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity 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 lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {