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

Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique creative space. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit 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 help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and 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 notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to 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 antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the god who created them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness infusing the location.

The taint 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 arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {