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D&D provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle 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. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against 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 close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and 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.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder 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 interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, 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 have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy 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 the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {