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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, 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 the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, 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 still don’t know what occurs once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel 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, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {