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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions 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 still don’t know what occurs once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {