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D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out 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 greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {