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D&D offers a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, 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 cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons 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 the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast 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 greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities 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 simply not very compelling. Holy warriors 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 a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply 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 shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {