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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness 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. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics 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 problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {