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Dungeons & Dragons presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle 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 direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures 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: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas 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 (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. 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 of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {