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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons 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 completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 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 the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall 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 support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The 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 mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary 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 is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint 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 fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {