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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels 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, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels 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 create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy 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 made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the beginning of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {