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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. 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 mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings 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 stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil 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 deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience 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’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {