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

Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative 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 created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions 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 good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, 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 went “feral”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. 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 new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {