Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved The Most Problematic D&D Monster
D&D presents a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a blank canvas where the creativity of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and general lore. Even the most talented imaginative thinkers struggle to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a great deal of “new” material for D&D is a reiteration of sampled tracks. At times you encounter things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you cringe like when listening to “a derivative tune.”
Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the original settings of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.
A Brief History of Heavenly Beings in Dungeons & Dragons
Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon editions 12 (Feb. 1978) and #17 (Aug. 1978). These were essentially riffs on the celestial figures from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar angel first appeared, starting a tradition of beings known as celestials that is still present in the most recent version of the game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to serve as soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.
The mythology of celestials is markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of online research.
It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players stat blocks for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that controversial beginning hindered their growth. There’s also only so much what you can create for beings that are created to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can spin in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.
How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings
Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn 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. Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been slain by humans in a massive war that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the story. So what happened to the servants of these gods?
Brennan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a plague that destroyed whole nations. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestial beings became “wild”. They became monsters that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial entity held bound in a enormous casket.
It’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose obsession with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the insanity infusing the place.
The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or obsessions. They are victims; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been cut off, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently terrifying calamities.
Certainly, this might simply be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, mad entity with multiple fangs, but I also feel highly fascinated by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with Brennan’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {
