🔗 Share this article

D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the 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 overall to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. 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 Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been slain by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past 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 were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player 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 powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the place.

The corruption seen in the fourth campaign 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 dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {