[ WP ] Manufactured items level up each year on their birthdays . They gain abilities which are often helpful or insignificant , but sometimes bizarre or undesirable , and they get more extreme with age .

Our dig over in Afghanistan was a mistake from 
 the beginning. It's a known fact that these artifacts from several thousand years ago get a bit... deadly. Oh sure, levels have diminishing returns after you get in the hundreds, but a level 8000 bone axe that randomly got the sword beams ability is still a stronger weapon than most modern artillery. Seal Team Six used one of these to defeat the Chinese army. We checked out these artifacts, saw an urn that turned water into corn, a knife that gave it's owner spectacular decorative energy wings when held, and an arrowhead that pulverized any metal it touched into a pile of shreds, even when we just set it down gently on the table. The table was from the 12th century and blessed with invulnerability, but the arrowhead just bypased it and turned it to scrap, instantly breaking the table's levels and reverting it to a normal material. That should give you an idea of how dangerous some of these things are. 
 
 Nothing too unusual for a normal dig, except the formerly Middle Eastern tour guide became a white guy in a hawaiian shirt after touching a 4000 year old wheel that was blessed with `` Transform Human. Something like that happens every time, though. But then we hit something strange underground while my sentient pickaxe Eric was eating the dirt at the bottom of a hole. My belt vibrated for some reason. We hit metal of some kind. Dusting revealed some sort of slightly curved plate of unknown material. I had the rest of the team come and check it out. Nobody knew what it was, but it looked like it extended beyond the small area we dug out. 
 
 Weeks passed of us digging up this thing. It was a white disc shaped object, with a shine as if it were someone's pottery creation. A hatch was on one end. It looked like a flying saucer. Who knew how old this thing was? And age; it means power. We went inside, one at a time. It was definitely alien; strange machines lined the walls, unusual seats in the middle were clearly built for a race far stockier than our own, and we saw bones of these things in a corner. Our level detection powder showed it was a million years old, with every skill point invested into the act of turning plants into stone. Nothing that would harm us.But then we opened a little box in the corner, and that's when it happened. Opening the box was a huge mistake; I saw what was in there for a mere second. My eyes burned from the light that came out. My hands turned black from some ability, and my hair grew about a foot. I closed the lid. We three powder on the box to see what it was. 
 
 It showed up positive for a single trait, one that had never before been seen in an object; `` spawnpoint for eldrich abomination''. We ran. But, it was too late, the box was already opened. From three miles away at the camp, we felt the ground shake, saw the sky blacken, and the portal opened in the sky. A two mile tall humanoid came out, with tentacles all over it's body, glowing red eyes, wings, horns, the whole package. And it looked at us, and one of us got a heart attack, and we instantly regretted every moment of the past 3 years as the beast approached.
