Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Fixed My Least Favorite D&D Monster
Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”
The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due 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 its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.
A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.
In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.
It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable 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 roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years before the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?
Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial 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. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.
The corruption seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.
Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {
