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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic 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 D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. 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 wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. The DM 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 start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen 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 obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel 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 Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {