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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (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.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestials 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 creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to 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 destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {