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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

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 world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. 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 still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {