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Dungeons & Dragons offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (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.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit 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 faith of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {