Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster
D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. Yet, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”
The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.
The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to show up. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a lineage of beings called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.
In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The 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 subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of online research.
It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.
How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials
Honestly, I understand: 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 very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and each Dungeon Master is able to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what happened to 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 great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.
It is no accident that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity permeating the location.
The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; another terrible result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now frightening disasters.
Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for gods in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {
