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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 players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include 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 markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the start 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 became a blight that devastated entire countries. 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 appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {