The Latest Critical Role Season Four May Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster

D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint any kind of picture. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you cringe as if hearing “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past due to the unique worlds 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 Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he introduced new monsters that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures called celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against 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 close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning stunted their development. 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 narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy quickly. That general lack of interest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and turned into a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.

It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon 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 corruption seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own pride or fixations. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope Mulligan focuses on the notion that, no matter how “just” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their guardians, shepherding their souls to safety after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation 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 still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {