Arachne is a ponce

Arachne is horrified at the appearance of Louie and Dennis, but recovers quickly. He once again spouts some nonsense that the party ignores, and combat is entered! Arachne wins initiative, then it’s Dennis, The Captain and Louie. There are a bunch of Werespiders in the webs, but they’re all going on Arachne’s initiative.

Arachne starts by doing his Aerial Ponce, to much hilarity. It does a bit of damage to Louie, but Dennis don’t fail no Dex. Dennis responds by stabbing him with a spear, at which point we discover he is immune to poison. Damn. Dennis tries for the punch, but some coward in the shadows casts Shield on Arachne, and there wasn’t going to be any more hitting this round. Dennis shadow jumps up the corridor.

The Captain starts running up the webs, but he’s got 150’ to cover, so he doesn’t make it this round. He does press the button, activating Oriana’s army, which proves to be useful. Some minion whispers something to Arachne, and the vast majority of his minions run away to confront the army.

Louie uses Dispel Magic to dispel his hopelessness. In response, Arachne bites him, but he doesn’t get blinded. Arachne is immune to poison, so Louie’s retaliatory poison doesn’t take effect. Arachne then runs away like a little girl, and hides in the webs.

Dennis makes his perception check and punches the wall, hitting Arachne on the other side. Stun lands! Dennis then proceeds to punch the living crap out of Arachne. He does a crit and draws the Seer card, which isn’t on Ethan’s table of crits. So we all roll a d20, and we get those rolls as Divination rolls (18, 11 & 6).

The Captain slips past the descending Werespiders and makes it into the cocoon. The team is back together! Louie closes the distance to Arachne, but doesn’t get to hit him this round.

Arachne is a coward

Because he can’t handle our awesomeness unassisted, Arachne’s helpers in the webs start doing more. That shithead from the shadows (Arachne calls her “Black Widow”) unstuns Arachne. Arachne bites Dennis and flees again. This is becoming a pattern. Someone (We decide to call her “Green Widow”) casts Plant Growth on the chamber, severely limiting our movement. Dennis makes another awesome perception check, and finds Arachne’s hiding place again. He punches him in the butt 3 times, but Arachne makes his save vs stun every time (he has advantage on the save now). Arachne is bloodied.

The Captain spots Green Widow’s hiding place and sneak attacks her. Ironic! Louie looks where Dennis has been bashing away, comes up and BIG CRITs Arachne, who - runs away! Consistency is a virtue, apparently. This time he runs all the way away, one level of the track up, and activates a lair trap. Spikes start coming out of the floor.

Dennis takes a bit of damage from the floor as it activates, but then starts flying. He looks to where The Captain was hitting, and throws some cards at Green Widow. Green Widow dies, unnoticed and unmourned, like the nameless mook she was. Unfortunately her Plant Growth spell wasn’t concentration, so it turns out to have a longer life than its caster. Dennis shadow steps to to the end of the trapped and plant growthed area.

The Captain and Louie slowly make their way along the corridor. Louie falls to the floor at one point and dies, but regeneration brings him back, in the first of many cases. Dennis runs ahead to where Arachne waits with Black Widow. Arachne, predictably, summons 2 more mooks (monk mooks!) to fight for him and runs away again. Learn a new song, asshole!

It turns out that playing a monk is trickier than Ethan thought. Dennis gets into a fight with them, and through judicious use of damage redirection (it does more damage than the original attack?) and shadow step, manages to kill one on his own. Esmerelda appears from nowhere again (she’s pretty good at that) and dispels the plant growth, speeding up The Captain and Louie.

The other two (including Black Widow) happened to be near the end of the trapped corridor when The Captain and Louie make it out. They’re cleverly holding their action to attack when someone comes in range - they’ve been chasing down Dennis for a while now. Dennis responds by holding range and throwing cards at them. Fun fact I didn’t know - if you use your reaction, you lose your held action. So free hits without damage redirection for Dennis! Monk 3 suffers for holding his action.

The Captain stealths up to Black Widow and hits hard, but gets stunned by the held action. Louie runs into the centre and glares at them (he used all his action just to get there). Monk 3 uses that hard earned readied action and misses. Black Widow then hits Louie, and stuns him, but dies from the retaliatory poison. What a loser!

Dennis shadow jumps in and kills Monk 3 for the crime of being a bad monk. The party regroups, and heads up the stairs.

Arachne is out of minions

Half way along the upstairs corridor, Arachne decides to channel his inner Indiana Jones and sends a giant skull rolling down the corridor. The Captain and Louie dive to the corners and make their saves. Dennis shadow jumps past it as it approaches. Arachne then tries to gloat, having apparently missed the fact that he missed. He does that.

A little further along, Arachne sends that rolling skull again. This time, Louie takes a little damage. The Captain makes it to the end of the corridor and stealths outside. Dennis remains in the exit and looks around for something to hit. When Louie gets there, they decide that charging flat out worked so well last time, they’re going to do it again!

Dennis and Louie take to the skies, flying directly toward to top of the Big Top. They guessed correctly, because they immediately come under fire, and glimpse an invisible sphere of force ripple as the attack comes out. The attack missed, by the way. Louie tries Moonbeaming it, but it doesn’t do anything. Dennis, who has seen Rusty cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut, posits that it might be something like that, and advises Louie to try Dispel Magic.

Louie gives it a go, but a hand emerges and Counterspells. Dennis hits that hand, but doesn’t land the stun.

Where Dennis has a PTSD episode

The hand in the sphere now globs Louie. Dennis decides to cut him out, with the most appropriate item he has - his +1 non-magical silver dagger that Rusty made for him, all that time ago in Mordent.

+1 silver non-magical dagger…

Silver dagger…

GOD DAMN IT! Flashbacks to Lumiere, who could only be harmed by silver weapons, and the fruitless search for anything silver to hit him with.

Ethan and Zoe laughed and laughed. Dan had to leave the table for a lie down. Scott barely restrained himself from repeatedly head-butting Ethan’s table, but only because he was afraid the table might break.

Arachne is out of places to hide

Anyway, Dennis cuts Louie out of the webbing with his +1 non-magical silver dagger, and they execute their plan - Dennis tries to use the Heal scroll on Louie, knowing that Arachne would counterspell it. That sucked up his counterspell. Louie immediately tried Dispel Magic again, knowing Arachne couldn’t counterspell. But he failed the roll. Three times.

The Captain, however, fired his readied action on Arachne’s hand, and did enough damage to force a concentration check - which Arachne failed! Nowhere to hide now, is there?

Dennis punches the living crap out of Arachne, Arachne’s reaction also does big damage back. The Captain crits for 62 HP! Louie misses twice, but uses the 18 from the Seer crit from earlier to hit, and then releases Holy Weapon to do 46 HP.

Arachne runs away - again.

Arachne goes invisible. Dennis starts running around with his arms out at full speed, trying to locate Arachne for the others, but he doesn’t find him. It was a good plan, dammit! Everyone laughed. The Captain decides to have a swing at where Arachne was previously - and hits. Louie has a go too, but misses.

With only one place left to run away to, and completely out of minions, Arachne decides to take a friend with him. He tackles Louie off the big top and plummets to earth, doing 113 HP to Louie. The is just not enough to insta-kill Louie, which disappoints Ethan greatly, so Arachne then bites Louie while he’s down, “killing Louie”, according to Ethan. “Why does that kill him?”, asks Zoe. “Because he was already on death saves when he fell, the fall did 2 death save fails automatically, and the bite did another - you’re dead!”

“Louie wasn’t on death saves when he fell”, replies Zoe. “So the fall knocked him to 0HP, and Arachne’s bite did 2 death save fails - he’s still got one left”. Ethan’s disappointment was palpable.

Dennis makes a perception check to figure out that Arachne went with Louie (Arachne is still invisible) and he grabs The Captain and flies down there. Dennis used all his movement to get there, so it’s up to The Captain! The Captain draws a card from the Deck of Tarokka, and it’s - Barkskin! Which is of no use to anyone, but none the less causes much discussion of rules.

It’s Louie’s turn. He’s 2 death saves down, but Regeneration is still running - 1 HP, baby! He stands up, hits Arachne with his Morningstar for 19HP, and kills him! The crit (The Thief) causes something to fall out of Arachne’s pockets, so there was much time spent finding out what he has in his filthy pocketses, and it turns out to be a Web Silk Cloak, which gives advantage on stealth in a web based environment.

Louie takes Arachne’s necklace with a cylindrical charm on it. Dennis cuts some goop out of his corpse which will allow him to infect one person with Wolf-Were-Spider-Arachno-Lycanthropy.

With time to think, finally, we wonder what we were actually there for. Once we remember, Dennis and Louie go flying back to the maze to look for the Toymaker. The Captain has a think about the last place he was seen, and remembers his cylindrical prison. Very similar in shape to the cylinder on that necklace, in fact. As he applies his will to releasing the Toymaker from that prison, the cylinder on the necklace enlarges and releases the Toymaker. Which was very weird for Louie, who was carrying the necklace, and about 300 feet away.

End scene - it was late