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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode 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 fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar 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, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, 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 Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range 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 in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption 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 obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {