Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved The Most Problematic D&D Monster
Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”
The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.
A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D
Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “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 Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.
It’s understandable that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can spin in a many ways without losing their unique nature.
How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?
Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated whole nations. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.
It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.
The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.
Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation 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 nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {
