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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 participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show 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 crafted 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 really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. 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 riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article 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 first appeared, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and 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 notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with 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 so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {