Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Fixed The Most Problematic D&D Monster
D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of DMs and participants can paint any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, monsters, spellcasting rules, established non-player characters, and rich mythology. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive landscape of references, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that sound as good as “a classic hit,” other times you wince like when listening to “All Summer Long.”
The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although longtime fans of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (He strongly dislikes the deities!), episode 2 impressed me because of a truly original take on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.
The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons
Demons and devils (collectively known as fiends) have been included in D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in the publication Dragon issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than riffs on the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he introduced fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s where the deva angel, the planetar angel, and the solar made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is still present in the latest edition of the role-playing game.
In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of good-aligned deities, created by their creators to serve as soldiers, leaders, emissaries, intermediaries for humans, 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 Lower Planes and support the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their direct relationship with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include 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 markedly less fleshed out compared to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of ever-growing disorder and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a interpretation of Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more engaging side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of wiki reading.
It’s understandable that creatures who look like angels from the Bible went underdeveloped. There are stories that Gary Gygax felt uneasy about giving players game statistics for angels they could murder in their games, and even if celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that problematic origin stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for beings that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is restricted. In that sense, the bad guys have far greater liberty: They have defined superiors (Demon Lords, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly creatures that can evolve in a lot of directions without losing their unique nature.
The Way Campaign 4 of Critical Role Reimagines Heavenly Beings
To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that strike down wickedness in every manifestation can be cool, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs once the deity who made 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 decided to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that concluded seven decades prior to the beginning of the campaign. So what became of the followers of these gods?
Mulligan’s answer is straightforward, horrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the past of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into monsters that could destroy entire regions if left unchecked. The audience caught a sight of how scary one of these creatures can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (player Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a terrifying celestial held bound in a massive coffin.
It is no accident that the most compelling celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, for example, was a powerful Solar whose fixation with ending the eternal Blood War led to her being corrupted by Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. The planetar Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the evil in the Terminus level of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the insanity infusing the location.
The taint seen in Campaign 4 of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestials did not lose their virtue. They weren’t tricked, or misled by their own arrogance or fixations. They are victims; one more dreadful consequence of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been harmed, their connection to the afterlife has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, guiding their spirits to safety following death, are currently frightening disasters.
Certainly, this may just be a convenient way to solve the original creator’s initial quandary. It’s easy to justify killing an divine being when it’s a screaming, mad entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel highly fascinated by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in D&D. I am not entirely in accord with Brennan’s aversion for divine beings in his stories, but I nonetheless favor these horrific heavenly beings to the one-dimensional {