Critical Role Season Four Could Have Resolved The Most Problematic D&D Monster
Dungeons & Dragons provides a unique imaginative arena. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. Yet, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a five-decade history of campaign settings, monsters, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and rich mythology. Even the most talented creative minds struggle to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “new” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. At times you get things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” on other occasions you wince as if hearing “All Summer Long.”
The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the setting created by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original take on a traditional D&D creature type: angelic beings.
A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since the mid-70s, but it took a while longer for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the angels from biblical sacred texts; for more original versions, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar, and the solar first appeared, initiating a tradition of creatures called celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.
In D&D, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, created by their masters to serve as warriors, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and overall to inhabit their realms in the Upper Planes. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and help uphold the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Well-known instances encompass the angel Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms world, the mysterious Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.
Celestial lore is markedly less fleshed out in contrast to demonic entities. The chaotic Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and lords of demons warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging subplots. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gleaned in an short time of online research.
It’s understandable that creatures who resemble angels from the Bible received less attention. There are stories that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for divine beings they could murder in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and purposes, that problematic origin hindered their growth. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be servants of a god. Certainly, they have free will, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and so on) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their distinct identity.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Redefines Heavenly Beings
Honestly, I get it: Celestials are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of virtue that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we remain unaware of that much about celestials. As an illustration, we have yet to learn what happens after the god who made them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is free to devise their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to make this question central to the world of Aramán, one where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the followers of these divine beings?
Mulligan’s solution is simple, horrifying, and highly intriguing: They went crazy and became a plague that destroyed entire countries. A lot about the past of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has yet to be disclosed, but it seems that after the deities died, the celestial beings went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy large areas if left unchecked. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial held bound in a massive coffin.
It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestial beings in D&D, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose obsession with concluding the eternal Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil of Hell. The planetar Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the place.
The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, nor led astray by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were formerly their protectors, guiding their spirits to security following death, are currently frightening disasters.
Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to justify killing an angel when it’s a shrieking, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I don’t necessarily agree with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his stories, but I still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {
