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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

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 show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels 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 new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot 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 after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening 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’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {