That is a tad oxymoronic, so let me explain. Many fictional artifacts have rather exciting properties. The Ark of the Covenant shoots out weird spirits and melts faces. Gandalf’s fireworks form a full-size flying dragon. The DeLorean in Back to the Future travels through time. These are exciting and spectacular artifacts.
Some artifacts are less exciting, and yet no less remarkable in their own way. Examples:
In Thud! (Discworld), there is a device called an Axle. It consists of two 6-inch cubes joined at one face, and is light enough to be carried by a person. One cube rotates relative to the other every 6.9 seconds. The torque appears to be infinite. With the right gearing, it can power a city. And it appears to have an indefinite lifetime; millions of years, perhaps.
In Roadside Picnic, a moderately common artifact in the Zone is the Empty. It consists of two metallic discs, about a foot in diameter and 18" apart. Despite having no obvious connection, they maintain their relative position no matter how they are manipulated. No ordinary force can push or pull them apart.
In D&D, there is an object called an Immovable Rod. It is an iron rod approximately 6" long, with a button on one end. If you press the button, it locks in place (apparently relative to the local terrain), supporting a force of approximately four tons. Pressing the button again unlocks the rod.
What other artifacts with unostentatious properties can you name?
In Numenera the DM is supposed to come up with a long list of stuff like that, e.g., “A glass plate that shows an aerial view of a city that no one’s ever seen. A egg-shaped metallic bauble that occasionally spins and speaks in a language no one knows. An aerosol can that sprays sparkling paint that hangs in the air. A device that emits a projection of a human face that changes expression depending on what direction it is facing.” (List from the video game.)
" There were two controls, one on each hand grip; a zoom wheel and a trigger.
You looked through the sight, zoomed in until the target you had selected just filled your vision, then you pressed the trigger. The Lazy Gun did the rest instantaneously.
But you had no idea whatsoever exactly what was going to happen next.
If you had aimed at a person, a spear might suddenly materialize and pierce them through the chest, or some snake’s spit fang might graze their neck, or a ship’s anchor might appear falling above them, crushing them, or two enormous switch-electrodes would leap briefly into being on either side of the hapless target and vaporize him or her.
If you had aimed the gun at something larger, like a tank or a house, then it might implode, explode, collapse in a pile of dust, be struck by a section of a tidal wave or a lava flow, be turned inside out or just disappear entirely, with or without a bang. "
"that the fact a Lazy Gun was light but massy, and weighed exactly three times as much turned upside down as it did the right way up, was almost trivial by comparison. "
The Lost Room is full of fictional objects with strange properties. It’s like a Roadside picnic in that sort of sense. The whole premise is weird objects.
The Key: It’s a hotel room key. You open any door and on the other side is an old hotel room. Go into the hotel room, close the door, think of anywhere with a door and open it and you’re there.
The Comb: Run this item through your hair and you stop time for 11 seconds.
The Quarter: Swallow the quarter and a thought becomes real (it’s been a while, so I’m hazy on this). That thought goes away when you…uh…eliminate the quarter.
Robert Sheckley’s “Something for Nothing” has the “utilizer”. You push a button, and wish for something, and it appears. BUT . . . it keeps a tab of what these things cost, and eventually, you WILL have to pay the bill.
Larry Niven’s World Out of Time has a sophisticated teleportation system. On the ostentatious end, there is a medical device that can remove toxins from inside your cells, without damaging the cells. On the mundane end, there is a waterless toilet with a self-cleaning backside-wiper.
Larry Niven’s Ringworld had the “tasp”. This handheld device shoots an invisible ray that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Shoot someone with it, and they become immobilized with pleasure. It causes no physical harm, but is potentially addictive. One of the characters in the book was an aggressive macho warrior. He feared the tasp far more than he feared any lethal weapon.
The Lost Room (TV mini-series) had about 100 such objects, though a few actually seemed to have some reasonably useful purpose. For example, the cufflinks lower your blood pressure. The eyeglasses inhibit nearby combustion.
Most of the SCP Foundation’s SAFE class anomalies. They’re inexplicable but harmless. As opposed, say, to KETER class SCPs, which are exceedingly difficult to contain; the importance of maintaining containment is roughly related to the degree of hazard the object represents, although there are a few apparently-harmless KETER objects.
The Great Whatsit from Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is just a box. “Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt. Whoever opens this box will be turned into brimstone and ashes.”
The Talisman from The Keep (1983) sounds exotic and rather ostentatious, but in execution it looks like a flashlight.
A Green Lantern Ring
Mjolnir
Captain America’s shield
Most, if not all, of Black Panther’s super hero gear.
Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth
Doctor Fate’s Helm of Nabu
Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation and the Eye of Agamotto
My favorite Safe SCP is SCP-624, an MP3 player that creates tracks of its user’s favorite type of music as performed by a more musically skilled version of the user. If I used it, for example, it would create “DJ Rick Summon’s Greatest EDM Hits”.
However, one security officer who didn’t like any kind of music tried it. Track 72 was…
…the sound of his future death and then being tortured in Hell.
“The spire” from Pornucopia. A small device that can create anything, unlimitedly. When the protagonist recovers it, someone had abandoned it set on “ice cream”, and he had to climb a literal mountain of ice cream to reach the artifact.
