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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 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 D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin 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. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {