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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the 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 angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. 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 narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {