You're welcome! If it's useful, here's the full thing in metric.

WARNING: Last two times I tried this cooked icing, it failed. I'm not sure whether I miscopy a crucial step, or if changes to local butter were the culprit. Either way, proceed with caution. A ganache is way safer, and very similar.

Oh what a beautiful looking torte!

"The irony that I had to convert the measurements back to metric"

Haha. I tried to get as close as I could. Here's the written down metric version of the cake batter. It's an older recipe so I had to try to guess what a "knife tip" ended up as.

Small bonus: here’s the music I listened to most while working on Emmrich and the Watchers. Some of it probably only makes sense to me, some of it seems thematically obvious. (I don’t have Spotify so best I can do is an itunes screenshot.)

And to end on a lighter note, "Ever thought of becoming a hat person?" is an extremely oblique reference to a line spoken to one of gaming's greatest characters: Murray, the demon skull from Curse of Monkey Island.

(Curse is the first Monkey Island game I ever played, and therefore my favourite.)

The Nevarran hazelnut torte recipe is actually a family recipe from my grandmother, on my father's side. I’m beyond delighted people have actually made it. (Our recipe uses metric measurements, but the DA style guide uses imperial, so I was worried about the conversion. Looks like it went okay.)

I used to own the first edition of a board game called Mansions of Madness, and was supposed to learn the rules so I could lead my friends through it. But come the day, I’d procrastinated, and was running short on time.

Emmrich complains about Hezenkoss making him play complicated wargames when they were students, and that one in particular had three separate rulebooks.

One influence when I was pitching the Memorial Gardens to the rest of the team was Swan Point cemetery in Rhode Island. It's where Lovecraft was buried, and like many a Weird Tales nerd before me, I was curious and wanted to see it.

A second side note: did you know Vincent Price was a gourmand who loved to entertain? He and his wife Mary put out a beautiful cooking book, A Treasury of Great Recipes, filled with warm and charming commentary. If you're interested in that kind thing, highly recommended!

I also ended up reading Cushing's memoirs. In a bit of strange synchronicity, there were similarities between his life and traits I'd already decided to give Emmrich. Cushing came from a working-class family, had an intense phobia (his was of the dark), was vegetarian, and so on. I'd had no idea.

Peter Cushing in Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

These films are filled with handsome costumes, ominous sets, and the oversized passions I associate with gothic melodrama. Cushing's perfect in them.

Moving on to non-books: My First Cadaver, a podcast of stories from medical students and medical professionals.

I also read a few books by morticians and funerary directors. A friend lent me Smoke Gets in your Eyes and From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty (probably the most famous mortician on the internet?) I also checked out Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-city Funeral Home by Sheri Booker.

The Romantic poets (or any poetry on similar themes: overpowering swells of emotion, the grandeur and awe of nature, love and loss and grief.)

Palgrave's Golden Treasury was usually in reach.

Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Fellow Ligotti fans may already be thinking Emmrich doesn't really share the philosophy underpinning Ligotti's work, and they’re right. However!

MR James' Collected Ghost Stories (1890-1930)

My favourite ghost stories of all time. James excels at building dread, at writing people finding strange things in books, or around the corner, or in the old lane at night.

"Hi Sylvia, I’m a huge fan of the Lich path, it doesn’t seem like the popular choice but I’m fascinated with undead characters!"

Thanks Bunni! You're actually in the majority in terms of popularity. BioWare put out an infographic about choices a few weeks ago, and "lich" was winning out:

I played the character I always play in RPGs: "What if I could be a wizard?" This is my Mourn Watch necromancer Rook: