The head is grassy

This story was told by Mark Steuer for a long time (back in the 90s) on the Steve Jackson Games website.
The party was conducted by D&D, namely, one of its settings – Greyhawk (Greyhawk; according to this setting, computer was also made the Temple of Elemental Evil). All events developed around the confrontation of two adventure groups. We divide them conditional into party No. 1 and party No. 2.

One of the parties (party No. 1) https://coldcascasino.co.uk/ decided to arrange a trap for the other. As a bait, she decided to use a false artifact – the head of the grass (Head of Vecna).
In the world, Greykhou Genefit is a god of secrets, who once lost his left hand and the left eye, which became extremely powerful artifacts. The truth is with one curious property: the one who wants to use their power must cut off his hand (or tear his eyes, depending on the artifact), and then set the magic object itself in place of the lost limb, which then fuses with the body (perhaps the scene in the tavern from Planescape: Torment was inspired by the story about the limbs of the grass).
Back to our adventurers. A local abandoned cave was chosen as the place of burial of the artifact, at the very end of which the grasses laid the head. To give realism, the storage was filled with a wide variety of traps. And in order for competitors to know about him, all bards in the district were bribed to sing about the lost artifact.
And then the first turn in the plot happens. It turned out that not all members of the party that prepared a trap were informed about the insidious plan. Druid, acting regardless of the main party, learned about this “powerful artifact” and decided that his friends would win with this subject in this situation.
After passing all the traps and illusions, the druid reached his head. He picked it up, checked it for spells. The subject did not radiate magic. Druid smiled: it was a famous feature of artifacts.
The question arose: how to activate an artifact? For this, the druid called carnivorous monkeys and ordered them to cut off his own head, and then attach to their body the footsteps. At the same time, he was not even embarrassed by the fact that the head of a one -eyed god had exactly two eyes.
When the first batch decided to check the repository, they found a bunch of traps, one decapitated druid and two heads lying on the floor. I had to remove the corpse and install all the traps again.
And then the moment came, which party No. 1 was waiting for: the second batch reacted to the songs of the bards about the super -eupacte, located, as for good luck, nearby. Party No. 2 passed all the traps, quickly took possession of the artifact and carried it to a safe place – to the nearest clearing.
The question arose: who is worthy to possess the heads of the foot? (It would be problematic to wear it alternately.) A dispute ensued, then outgrown into a fight. Using a couple of fireballs as arguments, the wizard proved to everyone that he is the most worthy candidate for the owners of the artifact.
The wizard ordered the warrior: 1) cut off the head, 2) substitute the footsteps to the neck of the magician.
Only the first item was made.
The second round of disputes began. A new winner appeared, whose body this time still tried to join this damn head. Nothing, of course, did not work out.
The second party suspected something was amiss. Surprising followed: too much time has passed between the moment of elimination of the head and the moment of applying the artifact! The result of the subsequent debate was another cut -off head.
At this point, the story ends, since DM has already laughed openly, after which everyone realized that what was happening.

Later, in 2000, the official module “Die, Vekna, Die! »In which the head of the veils was added as a real artifact. (But in general there are many more extremities of the veils.)

The best comments

Did the party really insight, and all its participants realized that they were incredible idiots? It is so ridiculous that I can’t believe. Even just for the sake of lulz and a pure fan is too much> _

As a loved one to play the drow, I would not argue for the title of worthy, but at first I would look at how it works with others, hehehe hehe. It’s a pity, GM laughed, it would be interesting whether they guessed themselves.
Thanks to the author for the story, the original idea.

Anything happens, the masters sometimes like such schemes with players like to turn that hold on, and the players are sometimes dull)