Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Resolved My Least Favorite D&D Monster
D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a blank canvas where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and players can craft any kind of picture. Yet, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to completely free themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “fresh” material 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 wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”
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 Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While longtime fans of Mulligan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.
The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings 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 show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles appeared in Dragon magazine editions #12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for more original versions, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In D&D, celestial beings are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. 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 Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious 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 demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. 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 Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.
It’s understandable that creatures who resemble biblical angels received less attention. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can do with beings that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades before the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?
Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal 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 deities were slain, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became creatures that could annihilate large areas if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a enormous casket.
It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus area of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the location.
The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, I hope the DM concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the creatures that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.
Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythos in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {
