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D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

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 world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify 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

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded 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. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise 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 killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure 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 madness infusing the place.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {