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D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series 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 interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. 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 Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, 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 distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {