UPDATED 12.02.2015 triple para shields Triple mod items RESEARCH (The Mausoleum 2010)

In Halloween 2010 they introduced some new event quests. One was "Commandeering a Mortal Vessel." The quest was given by a Halloween NPC in Lion's Arch and supposed to be available to any account with Prophecies. To complete this quest you and your party needed to travel to Majesty's Rest and enter a little mini-dungeon, single-level map called The Mausoleum, which you got into up on top of Rotscale's island.
The Mausoleum used art similar to the dungeon-y area we see when first taking a character to EotN, and the foes were like the Undead we see in some EotN dungeon areas (Shards of Orr springs to mind.) There was no Hard Mode version, but there was the possibility of Locked Chests in there. However, it was supposed to be a Prophecies quest ... not a Prophecies AND EotN quest. Originally, the loot dropped in there was reported to be the standard fare you'd see from Undead around Kryta.
When it was first added to the game there was a bug, as players with Prophecies but without EotN weren't able to access it. So a day or so into the event, ANet released a bug fix update to let players without EotN do the quest, as had been intended.
That update glitched something about the loot table in there. Stuff started dropping which seemed like ...
List of possible skins was pulled from some part of EotN (so it included things like spears, scythes, Paragon-req. shields and various gear skins which had only ever appeared, to date, with inscription slots instead of inherent mods [examples would be "Illusory Staff" and "Protective Staff."])
List of possible prefix and suffix mods attached to gear was pulled from some part of EotN. We saw drops with attached mods and resulting names (after id'ing) which we only ever saw before from inscription-loot source areas. Things like swift and devotion modded staffs, wands with the "of Memory" and "of Quickening" names (and the indicated wand wrapping attached.)
So the skins and the possible mods were all pulled from EotN loot tables, but whatever part of the code was generating the base weapons was using the inherent system! So we were getting things like scythes with inherent damage mods, staffs with inherent condition reduction or inherent HCT chance for an attribute other than the staff's requirement attribute. And we were also sometimes getting shields, wands and foci with up to two inherent mods. That's how the triple-mods happened.


Inherent shields, wands and foci aren't supposed to have mods at all. They're fixed. You can't add those suffix mods (shield handles, wand wrappings, focus cores) to them. But the game was generating such loot with the same chances of one to two inherent mods along with the same chance inscription-loot areas have to drop such items perhaps with an attached suffix mod.


So, triple-mod items are shields, wands, and foci from the 2010 Mausoleum which dropped with two inherent mods and one attached suffix mod.


You can salvage those attached suffix mods off, but you cannot add them back on (just like you cannot add a shield handle to an inherent-mod shield from Factions.) The game broke its own rules about what weapons can be modded. It did not break its enforcement of the rules on us, though.
At the end of Halloween 2010, a game update wiped the quest which allowed access to that special area from everyone's quest logs. So we weren't allowed to hang onto it after the event and keep hunting for interesting loot.
There is nothing in GW preventing the triple-mod items from being traded (it's not one of those things like Medals of Honor which are impossible to trade.) However, ANet (Regina) posted here a number of times saying the items are considered bugged/glitched and would be removed in an update. Such an update has not happened yet. Exactly how the glitched loot will be defined, determined and fixed is not any more clear than exactly when this update will happen.


Since ANet says the triple-mod items are a bug/mistake which will be fixed/removed, Guru does not allow them to be traded here on their system. So, you can advertise to buy or sell them in game if you want, but you can't make Ventari's threads or auction listings about the triple-modded items.
In Halloween 2011, the bug was completely gone. People report the area accessed in the quest produced standard, Krytan Undead area inherent loot without the interesting glitches from last year.