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Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals 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 notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if 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 creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. 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 fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {