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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

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 the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 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 wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. 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 Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from 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 lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question 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 prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, 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 turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

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 led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of 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 cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. 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 flat {