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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen 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 notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {