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D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of 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 Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures 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 lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit 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 support the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and 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.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast 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 Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. 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 “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity 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, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {