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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks 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 Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, 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 frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated 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 horrific heavenly beings to the flat {