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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably 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 Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, 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 independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: 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 quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {