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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created 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 established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest 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 permeating the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. 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 am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {