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D&D provides a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms 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 faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, 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 spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {