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D&D presents a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals 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 once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos 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 one-dimensional {