Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Resolved The Most Problematic D&D Monster
Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, 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 universe of existing content, so that a lot of “new” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”
Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM 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 other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.
The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D
Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestials that is still present 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 serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and 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.
Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.
It’s understandable that beings 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 kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for creatures that are created to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. 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 dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?
Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character 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 celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.
The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.
Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {
