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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, 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 Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

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 giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens once the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting 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 concluding the 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 Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, 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 aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {