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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters 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 Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {