can you really not recruit alma if you went through her manor encounter before?
You actually can! It just requires cheating.
So quicksave your game so you don't accidentally screw up your files, then go to the .toa-data folder and open the quicksave.json file using Notepad. Ctrl + F 'Warlock' and you should get a result under a line that says 'questFlags'. If you've already completed everything, it probably says "Warlock": 3, go ahead and change that number to 1. Save the file, reload the game, and you should be able to redo the Manor scene.