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D&D presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being 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 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 lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign 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 dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {