Critical Role Season Four May Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster
D&D provides a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”
Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the unique worlds of Exandria (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.
The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon issues #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel 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.
The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped 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 Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.
It’s not surprising that beings who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.
How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials
Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the deity who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?
Brennan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the present has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.
It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal 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 cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.
The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, it is hoped the DM focuses on the notion that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are currently terrifying calamities.
Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {
