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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, 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 in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {