In September 2024 we presented the Aquelarre Bundle featuring the English-language version of Aquelarre, the acclaimed Spanish dark-fantasy RPG. Across the Iberian Peninsula of the late Middle Ages, angels, demons, and nonhuman creatures support or exploit five warring kingdoms. Vampires ride with the mercenary White Companies that plunder Navarre; lobisome werewolves howl in Galicia; lamias stalk the roads and ghouls sniff the tombs in Granada, the land once called Al-Andalus; fallen renuberos join the Inquisition in Aragon, doing evil to regain favor with infernal forces; and Castilian king Pedro the Cruel makes deals with the Black Prince of England, deals that can cost him his throne and his soul. Behind it all, the witches of Galicia, the meigas, invoke the power of Lucifer in their ritual gatherings, the Aquelarre.
Aquelarre was first published in Spain by Joc Internacional in 1990. Inspired by Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu and building on the Basic Role-Playing system, designer Ricard Ibáñez created what he called “a game without flower-eating elves, but also without nameless horrors, in which legends were a reality” – a game of “fantastic creatures, magic spells, history, and the raw truth.” Over the next six years Aquelarre went through four printings from Joc, and Ibáñez wrote seven supplements. After Joc ceased operations in 1998, the game went first to Caja de Pandora (1999-2002), then Editions Crom (2002-2004), and finally Nosolorol Ediciones (2011).
An English translation of Aquelarre was funded in an October 2015 Kickstarter campaign, published in 2018, distributed for a time by Chaosium, and is currently available from Nocturnal Media.
One of Aquelarre‘s English-language translators, longtime game designer Lester Smith, wrote, “This is no simple fantasy setting, but instead a world of legend and history, set in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages. Five kingdoms vie for power, while angels and demons vie for human souls – not to mention creatures of Spanish fairy tales. Courtiers, knights, churchmen, and cutpurses; Catholic, Moor, and Jew; steadfast people of faith, and masters of mad mystic arts all pursue lives of adventure in this fascinating time.”
This all-new Aquelarre Bundle presented the entire English-language Aquelarre line: the complete 568-page Aquelarre corebook, plus the Breviarium extract; a gazetteer and bestiary of the Iberian Peninsula, Asturies Medievalia; and the full-length adventure Fatum Sperantia.
