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

D&D presents a distinctive creative space. In theory, it serves as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft countless scenarios. However, D&D also bears a five-decade history of campaign settings, creatures, spellcasting rules, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best creative minds find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this extensive universe of existing content, so that a lot of “fresh” material for D&D is a reworking of familiar ideas. At times you encounter things that are as brilliant as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” 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 (created by the DM Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the setting crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for its fourth campaign). While devoted followers of Brennan and his Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his common themes (Brennan really hates the gods!), the second episode impressed me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: celestials.

The Historical Background of Celestials in D&D

Fiendish creatures (often called evil outsiders) have been part of D&D since 1976, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to show up. A handful of distinct “angels” with individual titles were featured in Dragon magazine issues #12 (February 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical sacred texts; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented fresh creatures that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual II. That’s where the deva, the planetar angel, and the solar angel made their debut, initiating a tradition of beings known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the servants of good-aligned deities, made by their creators to act as soldiers, commanders, messengers, liaisons with mortals, and in general to inhabit their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are paragons of virtue who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Lower Planes and support the belief of their deity on the mortal world. In spite of their direct relationship with the gods, celestials are distinct persons with specific personalities. 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 Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped compared to demonic entities. The Abyss has ninety-nine levels of ever-growing disorder and demon lords tearing each other apart. The Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And don’t get me started the Yugoloth. In the meantime, all the essential information about celestials can be gathered in an hour of online research.

It’s not surprising that creatures who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for divine beings they could kill in their sessions, and although celestials were later expanded with a broader spectrum of looks and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. From that perspective, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have defined superiors (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a lot of directions without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Redefines Celestials

Honestly, I get it: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be cool, but they also become clichéd very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know a great deal about celestials. For example, we have yet to learn what occurs after the deity who created them perishes. There is no canonical answer, and every DM is able to come up with their own interpretation. Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to make this question at the heart of the world of Aramán, a place where the deities have all been killed by humans in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what happened to the servants of these divine beings?

Brennan’s solution is straightforward, terrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated whole nations. A great deal about the past of this world, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the present has still to be revealed, but it appears that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They became creatures that could destroy entire regions if not contained. Viewers got a glimpse of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) encountered his “ancestor,” a fearsome celestial entity kept chained in a enormous casket.

It is no accident that the most compelling celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, story-wise, are those who have fallen from grace. Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a little-known Planetar who was called forth by a priest inside Undermountain and became obsessed with “cleaning” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, slowly succumbing to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings didn’t fall from grace. They weren’t tricked, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are victims; another dreadful result of the War of the Shapers. As the new campaign progresses, I hope Mulligan focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “righteous” that war was, the mortals who emerged victorious may nonetheless lament the consequences. Their world has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the creatures that were once their protectors, shepherding their souls to safety following death, are now frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a practical method to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane entity with rows of teeth, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation 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 still prefer these horrific heavenly beings to the flat {