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D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 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 the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen 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.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings 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 Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens after the god who made 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 deities have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials 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 ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {