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

Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, 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.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. 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 (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the god who created them perishes. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master 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 slain by mortals in a great conflict that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a terrifying celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {