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D&D presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief 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 encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although 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 narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, 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 tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. 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 realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {