Eventually, Dareau parted ways from the dinner table and left the party stuck in the room on their own. Magnus came around later and served them wine, but then eventually again left them stuck as they were.
The party decided to explore the house on their own, only to find that a group of strangely afflicted people, thralls to some greater power, were coming for them and trying to attack them. The suits of armour lined up in the entryway were animating themselves to life, and following a similar suit.
There was no sign yet of Magnus or Dareau. Just a manor filled with trouble, and a courtyard blanketed in naught but eternal darkness.
As the party ventured on through the manor, they came across a number of other grizzly sights; including a set of ghoulish figures residing in the manor's servant quarters, and a seemingly abandoned chapel with only a black tome laid upon its lectern.
They chose to take the book with them, and later managed to pry it open by force — though when they did, an eerie silence settled itself over the manor around them, before not long after a slew of shadowy apparition began to haunt its halls.
Eventually the party managed to find Magnus again, hidden away in his own steward chambers. Though harrowed by the events around, the gentle giant confided to the adventurers in the situation at hand; of what had happened in the manor before and what was even now dwelling in the cellars.
With bolstered hearts and plans laid, the party made way for Dareau Fletcher's study, where they hoped to most likely find a way to breach the reinforced doors down to the cellar ... or if nothing else, further clues as to what had happened.
Along the way, they encountered Dareau himself: the maddened sorcerer had hidden himself after the dinner, and first now chose to spring out from the darkness with a fireball aimed directly at the party. Though injuries were great over the fight that ensued, during which several of the manor's haunting apparitions joined into the fray in an attempt to slay the intruders, both them and Dareau himself were put to rest. A grizzly sight decked out in the now dishevelled dining hall.
In Dareau's study, the party found a letter written by the man himself, written to his already dead — and not reanimated — wife Jocelyne. In it, he spoke in great detail of how he had pined for her, as well as the deal he had struck with an enigmatic patron from realms beyond, and of the deeds he had done as a result in hopes that she would return to his side.