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

Dungeons & Dragons offers a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings 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 act as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks 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. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight 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 “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {