Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved My Least Favorite D&D Monster
D&D provides a unique creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”
The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.
The Historical Background of Celestials 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 show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures 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, starting a lineage of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, leaders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The 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 Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.
It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also become clichéd quickly. That general lack of interest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?
Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.
It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.
The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to security 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 angel when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {