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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit 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 help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence 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 hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded 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 created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” 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 lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, 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 aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {