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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 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 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting 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 hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. 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 looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated 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 gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence 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 fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also 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 gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {