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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel 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 less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that 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 looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting 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 became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {