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Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history 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 landscape of references, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. 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 Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures 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 tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels 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 that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after 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 frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also 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 campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {