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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (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 appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen 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 demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {