'The ones that came before' had crystal powered AirPods

As a forever GM, this is one of my favorite tropes, it's usually one of the driving forces in my worlds, I tend to prefer narrative power struggle type top level conflict in my worlds and this trope just makes for such fun gameplay.

Either there's multiple influential organizations vying for control of the ancient tech, or a group of userpers that found it, or the current ruling org is using it, or it was undiscovered until the PCs activated it (a good way to also be able to fluidly integrate a chosen one trope into a group without one single chosen one)

In a magic world, pure magic gets stale and starts to feel all the same, but replacing some of that magic with ancient tech can add a lot of fun flavor that doesn't need to upset game balance and can provide power advancement in ways beyond experience and level ups.