Critical Role Campaign 4 May Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster

Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, 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 demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, 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 very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity 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 make this question central to the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {