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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’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 history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems 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 frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity 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 stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {