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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection 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 the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos 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 subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy 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 Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, 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 turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {