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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 players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, 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 universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels 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 introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. 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. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed 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 hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, 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 realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {