Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved The Most Problematic D&D Monster
Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, so that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe 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 (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.
A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (collectively known as evil outsiders) 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 were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” column in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the role-playing game.
In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as warriors, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate 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 Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include 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 Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.
It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is limited. In that sense, the bad guys 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 spin in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials
To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what happens once the god who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the campaign. So what happened to the servants of these gods?
Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A lot about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.
It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War led to her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.
The corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; one more dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who emerged victorious may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.
Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s original dilemma. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {
