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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due 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 its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks 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. Certainly, 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 etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {