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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings 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 felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for 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 antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption 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 fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature 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 the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {