The Latest Critical Role Campaign 4 May Have Resolved My Least Favorite D&D Monster

D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestials that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of benevolent gods, created by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with individual traits. Famous examples include Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is notably less fleshed out in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and lords of demons tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players stat blocks for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a many ways without losing their unique nature.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestial beings are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and turned into a plague that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the history of this world, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign 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; another terrible consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, I hope the DM concentrates on the notion that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may still regret the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the creatures that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security after death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s aversion for gods in his campaigns, but I still prefer these monstrous celestials to the flat {