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D&D provides a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s 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 where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains 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. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {