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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times 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 (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although 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 do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting 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 story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {