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D&D offers a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world 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 recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall 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 help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and 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 fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures 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 much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

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, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {