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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, 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” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel 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.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, 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 creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. 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 fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {