(Again, I'm not sure which order we are going in.  ) 

Ironically, Quin has seen these creatures before and loathes them. She wishes she had the power to heal members of the group but all she can do is try to kill the creature who has been trying to order her minions of spiders around.  She only sees one of them. She hopes that is all there is. The place is a basement and she doesn't know how big it is but she is rather hoping that the one creature is her only target. 

First she casts the following bonus action: 

Hexblade’s Curse

Spider Cellar continued

Pushing through the webs, Lia and Hatch barely manage to make it within arm's length of the drider, but make it they do, with sword and axe biting into the fat spidery body. Three of Quin's arcane bolts fly wide but one burns a smoking hole deep in the arachnoid abdomen and a black ichor oozes out of the wound. Throm's bloodshot eyes sight along his crossbow, and he fires two of his three bolts into the drider's shoulder, causing it to drop its longbow. But the creature's attention is on Lok, because despite its attempts to parry the barbarian's furious dagger blows, several manage to bite through its dark skin deep into its torso, and the creature feels the lifeblood draining from its vitals. Scuttling up the webs to the ceiling to get the benefit of height, and drawing a longsword from the scabbard at its back, the towering drider hacks down at Lok with heavy two-handed swings, cutting into his shoulders.

Lok takes another 7 damage this round.

Hatch's Lay on Hands and Protection from Poison happened at the end of Round 4, before the drider's attack in Round 5, so yes you're right he does get the benefit. There was no saving throw for the drider's poison damage (unlike the spiders) but he has resistance, so would only take 3 damage instead of 6.

Two of Lok's daggers were crits, so I added the extra damage.

Quin, I believe you are out of sorcery points, so we are back to just two shots of Eldritch Blast, correct?

The drider's movement was just for effect. Its gets no actual benefit to its attacks, and is still within melee range of everyone that wants to attack at melee. It is severely wounded.

"Attack! Divine Smite! Paladin! Heck yeah!" Hatch said, getting into it.

Attack 14

Damage 5

Divine Smite 8

Extra Attack

Attack 25

Damage 8

Divine Smite 11

(First time using Divine Smite since playing Paladin in campaigns)

 Meanwhile, back upstairs....

"Well, let's see what this place has to offer!"

Onyx stood looking around, an eager smile on his face, just inside the door to the Hotel Corona. He had just walked in from a recent adventure and was now looking to find a place to rest and relax for a few days. His familiar, an owl perched upon his shoulder, shuddered and gave a few hoots. It seemed... distressed.

The young warlock took his free hand, on which he wore a rather obvious gold ring with a black gemstone, and stroked the spirit-in-bird-form. "What's wrong, Lannel? Don't tell me we've somehow run into trouble again?" He only carried a quarterstaff with him, one made of a dark wood, carved into a twisted pattern; along with a backpack on his back, over his long overcoat. A somewhat sizeable tome of some sort, large but not too thick, peeked out above the bottom-right outside pocket of the coat, counterbalancing what appeared to be a bundle of notes and papers slightly bulging the bottom-left pocket. Beneath the coat appeared to be somewhat-fashionable traveling gear rather than armor, and the young human carried himself with the curious air of an academic. Of course, at just a bit over five feet tall, that seemed to suit him far better than a more aggressive personality would have. His somewhat unkept white hair, just long enough to cover his ears, helped complete the image.

Growing a bit wary, Onyx began looking around more slowly, studying the occupants of the tavern as he walked through the lobby up to the bar that was visible. Whispering something to his pet as he sat down, he turned to look for the bartender as the owl flapped and flew off to the rafters.

(( Onyx is unsure of what's going on, and while waiting for a bartender, will try to intuit what he can from watching everyone else. Insight Check: 20

He's had Lannel fly to the rafters both to look for anything odd and to help keep an eye out for anything sudden. Using the owl's stats, including darkvision - Perception Check: 12 ))

(Im just going to throw my turn in right now, with the assumption that the drider survives to the next turn.)

Lok continues his assault on the drider

Attack: 21 (Advantage: 19 )

Damage: 8

Extra Attack: 12 (Advantage: 23 )

Damage: 10

Fury Attack: 19 (Advantage: 11 )

Damage: 7

 (Im posting now because I might lag behind tomorrow. Its my birthday and im gonna visit with family. but im trying to make sure im caught up with my posts :) 

Quin sells another level 2 spell as a bonus action to regain 2 sorcery points. (Assuming she can see the putrid thing). With the hexblade curse she forgot to add to her previous damage rolls, she tries again with 4 invocations of Eldritch Blast with great hope that one of them will prove agonizingly death producing to the creature above her head.

Attack: 16 Damage: 14

Attack: 16 Damage: 16

Attack: 17 Damage: 17

Attack: 28 Damage: 9

(I am down two level two spells now just for the advantage of buying extra cantrip points...haha, I have marked them off of my character sheet). I wanted to summon my familiar and now sure exactly how that works here though. What is the best way for Quin to summon her Imp  as a ritual  (his name is Buck and he has a very smart mouth and no respect but he's useful even though he's also a big chicken. He is very good at ferreting out information).

(Happy Birthday XionZilla! And welcome Onyx!)

Lia keeps going at it with her longsword...

Attack: 13

Damage: 11

Attack: 8

Damage: 9

(Wait, it's your birthday? Mine was yesterday. Wooot Wooot) 

Yes, welcome Onyx. It was you who inspired Quin to summon her Imp familiar. So she could send him to check you and yours out. He likes to disguise himself as a raven.

Quote from Crabitha >>

(Wait, it's your birthday? Mine was yesterday. Wooot Wooot) 

Yes, welcome Onyx. It was you who inspired Quin to summon her Imp familiar. So she could send him to check you and yours out. He likes to disguise himself as a raven.

 

(( Ah, thanks for the welcomes! Yeah, it'll be cool to see how the familiars will interact. ))

((My familiar is a smarta$$ know it all, afraid of fighting, regularly tells me how stupid I am and yet ferrets out useful information. It's all he's good for. There's no going full on warg with him...haha but he's good for a laugh.)). I almost named him Kreacher but I was nice.

(Happy Birthday to you too Crabitha!)

Spider Cellar

Flanking the drider from three sides, Lia's longswords, Hatch's hatchet and Lok's daggers are difficult for the creature to avoid, despite being on the ceiling. Throm's crossbow seems to have jammed and he wrestles with it in frustration. Three more of Quin's blasts strike the creature, and with a flash of divine light from Hatch's axe that blinds in the gloomy cellar, the creature gurgles one last cry in it's language and drops from the ceiling to the floor. Lok leaps onto the corpse and continues to stab it with his daggers, but as its blood oozes across the stone, his rage slowly subsides. Pausing to catch their breath, the weary warriors listen but detect no more movement within the cellar.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the main room: The patrons generally look rather subdued, save for one slightly enebriated dwarf at the bar calling out a challenge for a drinking game. It is as though they are sitting waiting for something to happen, and not expecting it to be anything pleasant. There is even a halfling with a lyre but she doesn't seem in the mood for playing. Lannel flies around the lofty atrium, but detects nothing out of the ordinary, save for a rather general negative sort of feeling up near the top floor.

Nice work with the combat everyone. Six/seven rounds is longer than any I've done on Beyond. And Happy Birthday to Crabitha and Rod. :)

Crabitha: I took Quin's attack rolls from post #646. Quin regains 7 HP at the death of the drider. Find Familiar takes an hour to cast, but to speed things up you can say it was already summoned but just dismissed, so just an action to recall it.

"Keep an eye out. I'm curious as to why the goddess of misfortune deigned to have this spidery drider problem persist while the inn kept changing around it," Hatch said, looking for anything that could explain why the cellar had been made to be infested.

Investigation 21

Hatch will cast Detect Magic. He will also cast Detect Evil and Good. I am now out of spell slots.

For the duration, you sense the presence of magic within 30 feet of you. If you sense magic in this way, you can use your action to see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any.

The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

For the duration, you know if there is an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within 30 feet of you, as well as where the creature is located. Similarly, you know if there is a place or object within 30 feet of you that has been magically consecrated or desecrated.

The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

Looking around the cellar isn't easy with all the webs still present, but Hatch seems to hone in on the important sites. At the far end of the cellar where even Willagee probably seldom comes, there is a large hole in the corner of the floor and wall. The Detect Magic spell illuminates the perimeter of the hole, revealing the same brand of magic here as at the front door of the tavern. Hatch's conclusion is that all means of entry (or exit) to the tavern have become blocked by the witch's curse, including this apparently unknown tunnel from underground. All around the back end of the cellar are smaller holes in the walls and ceilings, with small spiders crawling in and out of them, most carrying insects and small arthropods, and depositing these in piles on the floor. It would seem that these small spiders have been trained to gather such sustenance from within the walls of the entire hotel and deliver them here for the nurturing of the larger spiders. Presumably the larger the hotel grew, the more bugs were available in the walls, and the more the spiders thrived. The drider may not have been in the cellar at the start of the curse, but if it entered through the tunnel at any time since, it would have become trapped here just like everyone else. The Detect Evil and Good spell reveals nothing other than a lingering vibe from the dead drider.

Growing more concerned by the minute, Onyx decided to approach the halfling with the lyre. A bard? Maybe, but someone who should be willing to talk, hopefully.

"Ah? I noticed you're not playing. In fact, it seems obvious the entire mood of this place is somewhat ominous. Mind explaining what's going on?"

(( Feel free to just rush through the explanation if you like, I imagine you've repeated the story a dozen times, lol ))

The halfling looks up at Onyx. Another newcomer? Welcome, I suppose. Normally I'd have composed a few verses to tell the tale, but I'm afraid my heart's just not in it. The tavern was cursed by a witch not long ago, not to be lifted until a riddle was solved. We've had some terrible experiences so far - a man burned to death right in this very... well, it was different then. The halfling sighs with the apparent difficulty of trying to explain the inexplicable. Anyway, I'm Sylrila. I hope you can make yourself comfortable, because you might be here for a while. Some folks are doing their best to solve the riddle, so you might ask them, but I haven't seen them in a while.

After getting further details from Sylrila, Onyx began to frown. This was not good at all.

"C'mon, Lannel. I think we need to get out of here... or at least try."

Of course, it was likely futile, but he had to make the attempt. Heading back to the entrance once his familiar alighted on his shoulder, he opened the door and, just as was stated, faced a wall of inky blackness. Finding he indeed couldn't pass through it, the warlock spent several minutes poking, prodding, testing, and finally blasting the darkness, all to zero effect.

After just standing still, staring at the open door in frustration for several solid seconds, Onyx turned away with a huff, using his magic to shut it rather forcefully.

"What a witch!" he muttered to himself.

"Well," he thought, "might as well try my hand at tackling this riddle. Wonder where the other riddle-solvers are?" The halfling had said she hadn't seen them, so they were likely either upstairs, or perhaps below.

"Guess I'll try looking below first," he concluded as he headed back to the lobby, in search of stairs that led down.

Quin summons Buck who has been keeping very quiet. She sends him to search every floor for any other egress or entrance.

She looks in her spells and realizes she has used all her sorcery points and several second level spell slots to buy more sorcery points. It was worth it. 

Using mage hand and prestidigitation, she begans cleaning the area around the steps and the kegs of lager and ales. 

"Does anybody have anything we can cover that hole with? I had hoped I still had a wand of entanglement but apparently it got lost in my hurry to ehrm, leave the last job. I'm not even sure that would work. But we need something." 

She starts digging through her equipment. 'Oh good, jeweller's tools will help a lot,' she murmurs facetiously under her breath. 

"Does anybody have thieves tools you could use the mirror and look to see anything in that wicked hole at the back corner of the room?"  She realizes she probably sounds a little bossy and a little frantic but the spiders made her very nervous.

 Life gives you lemons, make lemonade, life gives you a sword? You make corpses of your enemies, sorcery is a good sword life has given you.

Quin: Wild Mage Sorcerer 5/ Hexblade Warlock Pact of the Chain 3. Female. https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Crabitha/characters/30941977

Hatch of course shares his investigative findings with the group. "Outside of covering what holes we can or trying to poison the remaining normal sized tiny spiders, I can't think of anything else we can do here. But I am out of spells. I think we should probably have a nice long rest before attempting to get further with the riddle. What do you think friends?"