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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than 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 magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, 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 unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player 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 fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {