Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Fixed My Least Favorite D&D Monster
D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”
Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.
A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, 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 faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances 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 the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.
It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials
To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens once the god who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?
Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.
It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.
The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.
Sure, this might simply be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {
