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

D&D offers a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of beings called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the place.

The corruption observed in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. 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 currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {