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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains 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 Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, 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 mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {