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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their realms 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 distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, 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 come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse 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 “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials 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 resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {