The Latest Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster

Dungeons & Dragons presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and participants can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their domains 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 belief of their god on the Material Plane. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is markedly underdeveloped compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be servants of a god. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without losing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that after the gods died, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the place.

The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM focuses on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the consequences. 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 security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this might simply be a practical method to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {