The Latest Critical Role Campaign 4 Could Have Resolved My Least Favorite Dungeons & Dragons Creature

D&D presents a distinctive creative space. Theoretically, it acts as a empty slate where the imagination of Dungeon Masters and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also bears a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast universe of existing content, meaning that a great deal of “fresh” content for D&D is a reiteration of familiar ideas. Sometimes you encounter elements that are as brilliant as “a classic hit,” other times you wince as if hearing “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has gotten plenty creative in the past thanks to the unique worlds of Exandria (created by Matt Mercer) and now the new world Aramán (the world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Mulligan and his Dimension 20 work may identify some of his common themes (Brennan strongly dislikes the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a truly original interpretation on a classic D&D creature type: angelic beings.

The Historical Background of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as fiends) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “divine messengers” with specific names were featured in Dragon magazine issues 12 (February 1978) and 17 (August 1978). These were essentially variations of the celestial figures from Hebrew and Christian religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to wait until the early 80s and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Monster Spotlight” column in Dragon, where he presented new monsters that would be included 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 called celestials that is continues to exist in the most recent version of the game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestial beings are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as warriors, leaders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and in general to populate their domains in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who fight against the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and support the faith of their deity on the Material Plane. In spite of their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples include the angel Lumalia and Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from the Greyhawk setting, and even Dame Aylin from the game 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 tearing each other apart. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting side stories. And don’t get me started the mysterious Yugoloth. In the meantime, everything you need to know about celestials can be gleaned in an short time of online research.

It’s not surprising that beings who resemble biblical angels received less attention. There are stories that Gary Gygax was uncomfortable about giving players game statistics for angels they could kill in their sessions, and even if celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can do with creatures that are designed to be divine minions. Sure, they have independent thought, but their narrative potential is restricted. From that perspective, the bad guys have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Archdevils, and etc.) but they’re in the end fickle and chaotic entities that can evolve in a many ways without sacrificing their unique nature.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Heavenly Beings

To be frank, I understand: Celestials are just not that interesting. Divine champions of good that smite evil in all its forms can be cool, but they also become clichéd quickly. That widespread disinterest implies we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what happens once the deity who made them perishes. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to devise their own interpretation. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan decided to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, a place where the gods have all been killed by mortals in a massive war that concluded 70 years before the start of the campaign. So what happened to the followers of these divine beings?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, terrifying, and very interesting: They went crazy and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A lot about the history of Aramán, the divine conflict, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it appears that after the deities were slain, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could destroy large areas if not contained. The audience caught a sight of how frightening such a being can be at the conclusion of the second episode, as Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a enormous casket.

It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting celestials in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. The angel Zariel, for example, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with concluding the Blood War resulted in her being tainted by the devil Asmodeus and transformed into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was called forth by a priest inside the dungeon Undermountain and became obsessed with “purging” the wickedness in the Terminus area of the massive dungeon, gradually yielding to the madness permeating the location.

The taint seen in the fourth campaign of Critical Role assumes a distinct form. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, nor misled by their own arrogance or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible consequence of the War of the Shapers. As Campaign 4 continues, I hope the DM focuses on the idea that, regardless of how “just” that conflict was, the mortals who won it may nonetheless lament the outcome. Their realm has been wounded, their connection to the afterlife has been cut off, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are now frightening disasters.

Certainly, this may just be a practical method to address the original creator’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an divine being when it’s a screaming, insane creature with rows of teeth, but I am also highly fascinated 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 campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {