Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved My Least Favorite D&D Monster
D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can craft any kind of picture. 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 completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “All Summer Long.”
Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.
The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D
Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and #17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, starting a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains 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 god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.
It’s not surprising that creatures who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings
Honestly, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?
Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal 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 died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.
It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.
The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who won it may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.
Certainly, this might simply be a practical method to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {
