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D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise 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 killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, 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 harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {