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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, 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 underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed 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 obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {