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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. 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 mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The 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 Yugoloth. Meanwhile, 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 went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {