Mechanical Arm
Come, my friend, it's just below.
Here it is. It has been crushed, nearly as much as the fossilized bone it was clearly connected to. That is probably the only reason we can even tell what it is - it was sealed off so completely that it couldn't rust away.
We have no idea how it could have possibly worked, of course, and I don't think we'll ever learn anything more about how to construct one. But think of what this tells us!
Whatever it was that made the crater, we know that people lived here, and they could somehow create a mechanical arm! Now, if a wealthy man loses a limb, a cleric can probably grow it back, but if a poor one does, they must figure out a way to get through life without one. Is this a unique find? It doesn't seem likely that we happened upon the remains of the only one, or an exceedingly rare thing, does it? If wonders like this were commonplace, what more could we learn if we attempted to dig deeper - perhaps we could rediscover the wonder of ages lost.
Utility
When created properly, an Arm functions exactly like a normal arm, as well as being the equivalent of a mace in combat. Mass produced Arms were not custom fit, and so they often did not respond completely to the user. This reduced fine motor control, but allowed the user to perform most functions and fight with their Arm or another weapon. A custom fit arm worked as well or better than a beings original.
During the last years of the Great Absence, the arms had become commonplace among soldiers. Tens of thousands of them were made, and while their use was widespread, most were concentrated in the doomed hobgoblin kingdom of Zralek Forge.
After the Empyrean Return most of the arms were destroyed, as was any knowledge of how to make them. The remaining arms were buried with their owners, or lost to time. Recently, however, a hobgoblin has rediscovered the method, and possesses the only working version in the world.
During the Great Absence, they were able to be manufactured by an artificer of middling skill from well documented plans. During the current age, there is only one being who knows how to make them, and it required a substantial amount of an addictive, mind altering drug to allow him to do so.
The Mechanical Arm was created by a team of hobgoblins and gnomes, working together during the Great Absence . During the time period, the Deities had become strangely silent, and the power of their magic waned. Much healing that had been done before was no longer feasible, even from the most devout followers. Technology reached its peak during this time, especially among the hobgoblins and gnomes.
Both species were adapting well to the changing nature of the world, and made huge technical leaps. The gnomes began to build great wonders of engineering, while the hobgoblins used the magic of artificing in step with the changing nature of magic. During one of the increasingly bloody wars of the era, as crude surgery was beginning to be practiced, the number of warriors losing limbs increased dramatically. A hobgoblin artificer became obsessed with restoring the warriors limbs, and attempted to find a solution through his magic. He brought in several artificers, and eventually made a prosthetic limb that needed to be magically enchanted to the being, and was not effective in combat.
It was not good enough. They realized they needed to make it work without the attunement spells, and make it more limber. They approached a gnomish engineering group, and explained the problem and goal. Working together, the gnomes refined the design to the point that the arm functioned quite well as both a weapon and as an arm, while the hobgoblins refined the magic to the point that it could be self contained in the arm, and created by an artificer of moderate skill. The end result was to extend the war by years, as losing an arm started to mean coming back with a weapon that couldn't be dropped.
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