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

D&D offers a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it serves as a blank canvas where the creativity of Dungeon Masters and players can paint countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers find it difficult to completely free themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of Exandria (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He strongly dislikes the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A handful of distinct “divine messengers” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon editions #12 (February 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar first appeared, initiating a lineage of beings known as celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestial beings are the servants of benevolent gods, made by their creators to act as warriors, commanders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, and in general to populate their domains in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Well-known instances encompass Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with greater violence and more interesting side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of looks and purposes, that problematic origin stunted their development. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are designed to be servants of a god. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is restricted. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and so on) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who made them dies. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended seven decades before the start of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and turned into a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the deities died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could annihilate entire regions if not contained. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in D&D, narratively, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy 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 D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his campaigns, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {