Lapis Orb of Dragonkind

Tap it for blue and it does the plain work of any three-mana rock that fixes a single color, no better and no worse than the anonymous ramp pieces it resembles. The rider is what separates it: spend that specific blue to cast a Dragon and it scrys 2, converting an ordinary ramp activation into card selection the deeper a list leans into the type. This is the trick of the whole small family of type-specific mana sources. The Signets and Talismans of earlier eras never asked what you cast; here, every activation poses a question, and only good sequencing answers it profitably. Cast a cheap Dragon early and the scry helps you dig toward the next; spend the mana off-type and you have paid three for a plain blue-producing artifact. Its payoff tracks how densely a build commits to winged fatties: a deck that runs a Dragon or two rarely triggers it, while one built around them turns each tap into a smoothing effect that keeps the chain of expensive threats flowing. The constraint is not a penalty on the mana but a bonus withheld until the mana is used the intended way, and that inversion (a rider you unlock rather than a downside you eat) is the cleaner half of this design lineage. Where Dragons are the plan, it is a soft engine; where they are a footnote, it is a mana rock that produces one color and nothing else.