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Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with greater violence 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 not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy 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 (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling 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 Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, 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 terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {