The Latest Critical Role Campaign 4 May Have Resolved The Most Problematic Dungeons & Dragons Creature

Dungeons & Dragons provides a distinctive imaginative arena. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds find it difficult to completely free themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. At times you get elements that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”

Critical Role has gotten plenty creative 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 Campaign 4). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative take on a traditional Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Heavenly Beings in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures 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 magazine, where he introduced new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel first appeared, initiating a tradition of beings called celestials that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the game.

In D&D, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their masters to serve as warriors, leaders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the belief of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from Baldur’s Gate 3.

The mythology of celestials is notably less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has ninety-nine levels of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers stat blocks for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a bigger range of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of virtue that strike down wickedness in all its forms can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That general lack of interest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. For example, we still don’t know what happens after the deity who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is able to come up with their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods were slain, the celestials became “wild”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate entire regions if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how scary 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’s not a coincidence that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil of Hell. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness infusing the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped the DM concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s original dilemma. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the one-dimensional {