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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast 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 Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {