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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared 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 version of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

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 get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {