"Turned out OK", and I'm looking for my jaw on the floor again. :P

I do see what you meant about the artifact on the right though.

I did six renders. They all worked as expected.

Pic 1 - Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun on.

Pic 2 - Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun off.

Pic 3- Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 4, sun off.

Pic 4 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun on.

Pic 5 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun off.

Pic 6 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 4, sun off.

I also included a screen cap of the render settings that I usually use. You can download all of the pics at the following URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xzc3m65dw9rayk/bagginstest.zip