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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan 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.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (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 handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and 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 where the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, 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 Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. 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 limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {