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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “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 angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of 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 celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {