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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions 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) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure 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 huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {