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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as 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 masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {