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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 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 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains 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 god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the 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 markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it 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 protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {