Critical Role Campaign 4 May Have Resolved My Least Favorite D&D Monster

D&D presents a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to act as warriors, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains 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 deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {