Critical Role Season Four Could Have Fixed My Least Favorite D&D Monster

Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive imaginative arena. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided 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 before the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {