Critical Role Season Four Could Have Fixed My Least Favorite D&D Monster

D&D presents a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and players can paint countless scenarios. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of campaign settings, monsters, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, so that a great deal of “fresh” content for Dungeons & Dragons is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you get things that sound as good as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past thanks to the unique worlds of its first setting (created by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although longtime fans of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (He really hates the deities!), the second episode stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a traditional D&D creature type: celestials.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (often called fiends) have been included in Dungeons & Dragons since 1976, but it took a while longer for their heavenly counterparts to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine editions 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would appear in the 1983 Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is still present 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 soldiers, commanders, messengers, intermediaries for humans, and in general to inhabit their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the agents of disorder and wickedness from the Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the Material Plane. In spite of their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are unique individuals with specific personalities. Famous examples encompass 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 underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The Nine Hells are a interpretation of the series Game of Thrones with greater violence and more engaging side stories. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gygax was uncomfortable about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and although celestials were subsequently developed with a broader spectrum of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with beings that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have free will, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately fickle and chaotic creatures that can spin in a lot of directions without sacrificing their distinct identity.

The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest implies we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what occurs once the god who created them dies. There is no canonical answer, and each Dungeon Master is free to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been slain by mortals in a massive war that ended seven decades prior to the start of the campaign. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They became insane and became a blight that destroyed entire countries. A great deal about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its consequences in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it appears that when the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience got a glimpse of how scary such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial entity held bound in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the eternal Blood War led to her being tainted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.

The taint observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or misled by their own pride or fixations. They are victims; another dreadful result of the Shapers’ War. As Campaign 4 progresses, it is hoped Mulligan focuses on the idea that, no matter how “righteous” that war was, the humans who won it 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 protectors, shepherding their souls to security following death, are now terrifying calamities.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s original dilemma. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a shrieking, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I am also very intrigued by this new declination of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for gods in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {