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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters 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 Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories 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 bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm 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 now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {