Only four players were at my table this week for Murder in Baldur's Gate: Lee was back, but Harry and Rich had other commitments. Paul's 4E table had five players.

We were playing through Stage 4 of the adventure; this stage is fairly light on actual incident involving the players. The two major events were Rilsa Rael manoeuvring the garbage collectors to go on strike, causing great unrest in the Upper and Lower cities, and Ulder Ravengard's intrigues to gain the position of Duke of Baldur's Gate. The players were quite happy to see the garbage piling up as they otherwise continued their revolutionary path, but Ulder Ravengard's schemes required more attention.

The players learnt through their contacts in the city of the discontent with the Parliament of Peers with Ravengard: although it was traditional to give the title to a member of the Flaming Fist, his recent actions had made them want to give it to the alchemist Caldwell, an elderly patriar they thought would be easy to manipulate. As all of the players have now worked for Ravengard, he summoned them for a private discussion, where he expressed his outrage over the problems he was facing with the Parliament. Along the way, he suggested a solution to his problem: if they group could convince Caldwell to decline the nomination, he'd be able to gain the title uncontested. And he knew of someone who was ready to accuse Caldwell of inferior workmanship and safety problems with his alchemical products – if the group would mention this to Caldwell and he dropped the nomination, the accusation could be quietly dealt with…

The group immediately agreed with Ravengard, but privately were very willing to sabotage his plans. They began by visiting Caldwell's accuser, a dumpy alchemist named Yssra Brackrel. She explained to them that Caldwell's main product – alchemically treated lumber that was resistant to destruction – was actually very flammable. She was unable to directly give them proof, but told them that she'd been hired by the Provoss family after their stables had burnt down. The group wanted more proof, and decided to visit Caldwell to get some.

Caldwell received them, and reacted in some shock to the suggestion that his lumber was dangerous, explaining that if it was as dangerous as they insinuated, the city would have burnt down several times already! He gave them some samples to test, and went away grumbling; the group hadn't let him know the identity of the rumourmongers. The tests of the lumber showed that Caldwell's treatment did make it very resistant to fire, and Brackrel tried to insist that they were using something that Caldwell had made to throw people off the track. The group tried to talk to the Provoss family, but were refused entry by the gate guards, who took little notice of their insistance they belonged to the Flaming Fist: in the Upper Quarter, the Flaming Fist have no dominion!

At this point, the group were pretty sure that the accusation was actually false, and so they told Caldwell not to worry, and then went to Ulder Ravengard and told him that Caldwell would pull out! Ravengard – for now – suspects nothing, but this may not last.

As we were now two sessions without significant combat, I used the DM's trump card – Coran – to hire the group (particularly Tait) to steal a platinum plaque from the crypt of the Whitburn patriar family! This was complicated by two matters: the first was a cultist of Myrkul who was raising the dead in the crypt. This led to two combats, the first against 6 skeletons (very easily dealt with as Callan let his Light Cleric just destroy them) and then against the cultist and 10 zombies, which was a more difficult combat – Tait, who still had a first level character, went down as his protection from evil spell proved not as effective as he hoped. As the zombies swarmed towards them, Callan rather wished he'd kept his light burst power still available; however, once the zombies inside the original room were taken care of, the other zombies that were attacking from the rear were able to be faced in a doorway, and the better defensive position allowed the group to prevail. (It was a fairly long battle; eight rounds in total).

However, the plaque wasn't visible in the tombs they'd explored. Lee, searching around, found a secret passage that led to the inner crypt, where the group found that an ankheg had bored its way into the chamber. This was a potentially dangerous fight as it spat acid at Tait and Lachie, but the heroes managed to make their saving throws, and then Lachie's barbarian hit the ankheg very hard, and Lee shot it a few times. The group were hurt by the time it went down – and Tait unconscious again, having almost been killed outright by its bite – but it eventually only took two rounds to take down. Looting the valuables in the crypt gave them a tidy sum of money as well as the plaque, which they returned to Coran for a further reward. He told them to keep themselves available for an "entertainment" he'd be running in the upcoming weeks, and with that we closed the session. Again, it had run for about 2 hours.

There are a couple of things that I didn't include in this session from the notes that I'll catch up on next week (especially when the wizards rejoin us), especially concerning the Ducal election; it may be that the players are able to keep their position with the Flaming Fist for a bit longer…