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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. 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 (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known 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, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {