Is poison and making a character unconscious completely synonymous with each other? To clarify: a character is made unconscious once he is fully poisoned but should a character that is made unconscious, as in stage three, be automatically fully poisoned aswell (ie add poison cards then discard them)

The reason for my confusion follows: If the two are separate then Beorn would fall unconscious but if they aren't then Beorn would not as he can't have poison attachments

No, if a card effect just tells you to make a character unconscious, there is no need to discard cards from your deck to fulfill a poison effect. You just do precisely what the card tells you do to and no more, so you simply make the character unconscious with no extra steps.

Cool. I thought as much, but looking at the card thematically (ie the spiders capturing all of the characters)I wasn't so sure.

First game I got battered by the spiders at this point. I'm going to have another go at it tomorrow.