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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil 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 unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and 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 notably underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately 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 Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal 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 priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology 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 {