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D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” 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, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall 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 close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions 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) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {