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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe 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 crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as 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 handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings 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 implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {