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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. 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 bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors 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 remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with 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 mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {