Explosive Meteor Fragment

A small meteor about the size of a soccer ball, which was on the Warehouse's Most Wanted List for a little over 700 years before being collected.

Origins
When meteors land on the Earth's surface, they are prone to creating massive explosions. Their sizes tend to vary, and by the time they land can be as small as a pebble, or much larger and more damaging. When travelling through the atmosphere, they can reach temperatures of a minimum of 1200 degrees Celsius (approximately 2200 degrees Fahrenheit).

Effects
When exposed to temperatures exceeding 1200 degrees Celsius, the artifact creates massive explosions, which result in the destruction of an area three miles in diameter. This explosion very rarely leaves any impact crater, but on several occasions has left craters of varying sizes. It is unclear what circumstances cause the creation of a crater or the size of it.

History and Collection
It is unclear the exact origins of this artifact (see Trivia below), but the first record of its appearance was in 156 BC, when Warehouse 2 received reports of an Egyptian village destroyed in a massive explosion. Although the Regents could clearly see the area had been scorched and found a small impact crater, they could not find any object in the area and were unsure what to make of it. Years later, in 122 BC, the Warehouse was alerted when another village, this one known for the production of iron weapons, was destroyed in a massive explosion. According to one witness who had left the town only an hour before, they had found a meteorite nearby and wanted to melt it to get the iron out of it. By the time Regents arrived at the village to look for the artifact, they found that it was missing.

The artifact appeared several more times over the course of Warehouse 2's time, quickly moving up the list of artifacts to become the most wanted artifact at the time. Before the Warehouse could track it down, however, the Roman Empire invaded, and in the panic the records tracking the artifact were lost. It didn't take long, however, for the artifact to reappear, this time around the area of Israel in 12 AD. Agents attempted to track down the artifact, but it disappeared for over a century before appearing in Great Britain in 169 AD. Despite the attempts to collect it, the Warehouse failed, and the final sighting of the artifact cost the Warehouse its Caretaker at the time, Flavia Prisca.

The artifact remained dormant for many centuries, but appeared once again during the time of Warehouse 7, where the advance of the Mongols into central China in 1239 was disrupted for a short time when the artifact destroyed several villages that were occupied by the Mongols. The Regents of Warehouse 7 tracked the artifact as best they could, but it had fallen dormant once again after 1241, making it impossible to track further. Just before the Warehouse moved to Germany in 1260, there was a report of a village near Vengi on the continent of India that had been destroyed in an explosion similar to the meteor fragment, but due to the efforts of moving the Warehouse, the Regents decided to ignore this one case.

When the Warehouse moved to the Mughal Empire during its tenth iteration in 1566, one of the Regents brought back to light that the country had been noted in old records from Warehouse 7 for possibly being the last known activation of this artifact. Regents did a search around the area of what had been Vengi, but the centuries of passing had covered any trace of the artifact's presence. Despite not finding any actual leads, the Regents did learn that the artifact had activated several more times during some battles among small empires to the south of the present borders of the Mughal Empire.

Almost 90 years later, in 1654, two Regents were travelling in the area around Bijapur when they heard an explosion nearby. Moving quickly, they found the remains of a village, which had a small crater in the middle. At the center of the crater lay the artifact, which they quickly snagged and took back to Warehouse 10 for storage.

Trivia

 * During the removal of artifacts from Warehouse 2 to Warehouse 13 in 2010, records regarding this artifact were discovered. According to these records, witnesses had reported that the meteor had crashed down onto the village in 156 BC, the year the artifact was first noticed. Regents at the time were unsure how the artifact obtained its abilities if it impacted at that time and destroyed everything, especially given the small size of the impact crater. They hypothesized that the artifact had absorbed the fears of the village it hit, causing its impact to become more violent and create the effects.
 * During the time of Warehouse 12, Agent H.G. Wells put forth the hypothesis that it was possible that the artifact, despite the seemingly impossible nature of events, could have been created in space and came to Earth from the stars. She posed that the artifact had either been created on its own through unknown means in the emptiness of the solar system, or that it had been created through "another source similar to humans" and sent to our planet. It was rejected at the time as a ludicrous idea by other agents.
 * This artifact was the second highest on the Warehouse's Most Wanted List for the over 700 years. The only artifact ranked higher on the list was the Minoan Trident.
 * This artifact has been mentioned as one of the deadliest known artifacts historically, with the estimated number of people killed by the artifact in the tens of thousands.