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D&D provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #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 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue 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 close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, horrifying, 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 divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight 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 entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. 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. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {