Artifacts in Heroes III.

I was playing as a Barbarian (as usual) on the Chaos Reality map. I found the Might of the Dragon Fathers in the water — it stopped being interesting, so I just went and destroyed it (except for the ring +1 morale +1 luck)

By "in the water," do you mean the guy on a log gave it? Cool! However, the "Chaos Reality" map is from RoE; I don't know how you managed to encounter such an artifact there... Moreover, the appearance of composite artifacts on random maps is usually disabled even in SoD =))