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D&D offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present 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, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight 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 yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, 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 solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {