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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” 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 Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief 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 Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {