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D&D provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall 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 help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas 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) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

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

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {