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Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due 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 other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures called celestials that is continues to exist 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 act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their domains 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 faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum 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 divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign 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 casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {