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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

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

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines 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 get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel 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, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {