The companions continued to treat the teleport circle with considerable caution, though the mystery it represented tugged at them. Gorfang took a good hard look around it; the stonework and environment being orc-made, he had a unique insight into where physical traps might be located, and besides, he'd established his own unique trap-finding techniques in the pyramid of Anshenkehra. He found nothing. Méabh cast a Detect Magic and True Seeing, but discerned nothing more sinister than the Transmutation magic normally associated with teleportation. So it probably wasn't trapped... but where did it go?
The 
means of discovering this was once more taken from Méabh's magical repertoire. She cast Arcane Eye, and sent the little flying eyeball up in a loop to dive-bomb onto the teleportation circle. With a silent blip it vanished, and the circle went dark.
Méabh watched what it reported carefully. At first she thought it had malfunctioned; a blizzard of white distortion whirled past, almost obscuring all vision. Then she realized; it was a blizzard. Wherever the Eye had arrived, it was snowing. She directed the remote sensor to fly around and investigate.
She was looking at a wide, shallow valley, almost bowl-shaped, scattered with the ruins of ancient buildings made on a cyclopean scale. Snow lay thickly on the ground, and was whipped past by an ongoing blizzard. Despite the thick clouds and misty atmosphere, she could tell that it was around the same time of day as it was where she herself stood.
Directly below the point where the Eye had arrived she could see a square slab of stone, magically free of snow or ice, with a matching pentagram engraved into its' surface. Good - there was probably a way back. Méabh directed the Eye outwards, to investigate the rather unpromising environment she had discovered, as she did so she kept up a running commentary to her companions. The ruins were very eroded, thousands of years old by appearance, but here and there features were visible, and occasionally doorways or windows. These were designed on a completely different scale to 'normal' and they reminded her of something. After a moment's thought, they had it - these ruins had been built by the giants of Fal Torth.
As 
she roamed through the icy, crumbling buildings, Méabh caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Something was moving in the ruins nearby, something large. She directed her Eye to approach it and tracked it down, but when she found it she wasn't totally sure what it was she'd found. A huge, worm-like creature, covered in white chitinous plates of armour, with dozens of insectoid legs underneath. Topped by a massive armoured head filled with rows of teeth and equipped with blank-looking faceted eyes, it seemed completely at home in the deep snow, but the way it moved didn't seem to bespeak significant intelligence.
Nasty though it looked, this wasn't quite what she was looking for, and she directed the Eye onwards. For several minutes, nothing special came into view, and then, quite suddenly, it rounded the corner of some crumbling masonry - and came face-to-face with a dragon.
This was fairly startling, even by remote viewing, but even so Méabh noticed several things immediately. The dragon was smaller than Setram by quite a way, and was bone-white in colour. It seemed quite comfortable in the arctic environment, wheras she recalled he had quite liked to be warm and dry. Finally, and most peculiarly, she noticed that it had a disc of silvery metal, very bright and reflective, driven into the scales of its' head between the eyes, decorated with some kind of possibly magical script. The dragon's eyes turned towards the Eye - it had noticed it - and an instant later the vision vanished as the spell ended prematurely. The eye had not been attacked - Méabh would have felt the difference - the spell itself had stopped as if she had asked it to.
Settling back on her heels, she considered what she knew about white dragons. As ever, when she did this, she discovered memories from other people's experience filtering into her mind along with the ones from her own, fed to her by the Book of Gennen, interleaving smoothly with her own knowledge until it was almost impossible to tell what she really remembered 
and what had the Book had provided.
White dragons were one of the smaller breeds of evil dragon, and the least intelligent. Preferring (obviously) an arctic environment, they were quite fussy eaters for dragons and much preferred their meat to be frozen when they ate it. Like all dragons they were greedy, but in particular were avid for diamonds.
A few minutes later, the pentagram reset itself, the cyan blue glow swelling back to its normal slightly pulsating self.
They decided to leave some time before sending another scout eye through, and took a couple of hours' R&R. Gorfang in particular explored some more of the ancient orc city of Gadûhvrás. He felt a strong affinity with the sprawling ruins and their long-dead builders. Occasionally, he would come across the remains of fighting; bones, fragments of armour, melted rock and metal where the dragonfire had scored the defenders out of existence. Returning to the area Thykon had been using, he spoke at some length with Shufghoth, now firmly established as the leader of the freed slaves. These were told they had the choice of remaining in Gadûhvrás, under Shufghoth's command, to build a new settlement, or to leave. Most chose to stay, but a few elected to leave. They were pointed in the direction of the exit, but on the way through the dark passages met with unaccountable accidents. Gorfang didn't want anyone to know there were orcs in Gadûhvrás once more.
Near evening, Méabh cast her Arcane Eye again, and sent the invisible sensor through the teleporter once more. This time, she steered it through the ruins with more care and was able to observe the occupants undetected. She saw several white dragons moving around, and large numbers of the strange armoured worms. Something odd caught her eye, and she zoomed back for a closer look. Each of the dragons had, driven into the scales of its' head between the eyes, a disc of silvery metal. When she described this, Gorfang looked up. "Mithril?" he asked. Méabh nodded; it looked like the legendary metal. She continued to circle the ruins for some time, improving her knowledge of the layout, until only a few seconds of the spell duration remained, at which point she brought the Eye back through the teleport circle just to be sure that it did work in both directions.
In exploring the small area Thykon had put to his purposes, they'd discovered more of the thick fur clothing the fake Dragonarmy soldiers had been carrying when they were attacked on the road to Vorsand. Shrugging into these, they prepared themselves with protective magics. Bog and Shamlakh stayed behind, though Bog sent all the Boom Boom he had available with the adventurers. Ready as they'd ever be, they stepped through the teleportation circle.
The first and most overwhelming impression of the other side was cold. All felt the icy fingers of the wind-driven snow plucking at them through the furs. Méabh almost absent-mindedly cast an Endure Elements, insulating her from the worst of it; the others simply drew their cloaks tighter.
They glanced around, remaining close to the teleport circle, and Méabh added a Detect Magic and True Seeing to the spells she had running. As she did so, they became aware of movement at the far end of the valley. Dark shadows shifted, approached, and emerged from the snow and mist as three white dragons and one of the armoured worms. Two of the dragons were the same size as the one seen earlier - perhaps it had been one of them - but the third, in the centre, was huge, nearly Setram's size. All three had the strange mithril discs driven into their foreheads. After a moment's study, Lynien and Méabh also noticed that, somehow, it seemed to be snowing harder where the dragons stood. The whirling, driving flakes were thicker and the air seemed colder, though it didn't settle on the dragons themselves. The snow-worm, too, was far bigger than the ones they'd seen, fifty feet long to their twenty. Despite the formidable appearance of these creatures, their approach was not especially hostile, and the companions maintained a wary stance.
Slightly over a hundred feet away, the monsters stopped. All four glared around, and it was noticable that the snow-worm's movements were easily as lit by the light of sentient thought as those of the dragons; unlike its' smaller kin, it was aware. The central dragon eyed the interlopers and spoke in a voice like an avalanche. "Where, then is Thykon? Has he sent you as slaves, or as messengers, or as food? Have you brought more g'dula? Bah! My patience with this place wears thin; he keeps us too long from our hoards!"
"Do you serve Thykon, then?" demanded Méabh briskly. It was immediately apparent that this had not gone down well. The two smaller dragons - and the snow-worm - stepped unobtrusively a pace sideways further from the central reptile. The big dragon's head went up and drew back sharply, always a bad sign with dragons, someone else's memories recalled in Méabh's head. "We have an arrangement," corrected the dragon angrily. "He is to gain vengeance on his brother, and with the aid of the g'dula and the weapon, we are to lay waste and conquer a rich, fresh warm land to the south of here, rich with meat and treasure and magic."
"He's tricked you then," commented Gorfang with satisfaction, "you'll simply be enslaved by the Lord of Dragons with his Sceptre." The dragon snorted (another bad sign). "There is no such being," he scoffed. "There is the Lady of Dragons," as he said this, he and both the other dragons dipped their heads minutely in an automatic gesture of respect and submission, "but no fool claims to be Lord of Dragons."
Méabh turned the full power of her superhuman charisma on the dragon. "What is your name?" she asked, the question so powerful that her companions felt a momentary urge to answer it themselves. "I am Vengan Doomstealer," declared the reptile proudly, clearly expecting this to provoke fear and awe in all who heard it." Méabh looked him straight in the eye. "I hate to kill people I don't know," she continued calmly. Vengan ground his impressive teeth, but then Méabh spoke again.
"Would you like to meet Thykon's brother?" she suggested. Vengan shook his head. "Not until the Weapon is ready," he said, "What weapon?" asked Gorfang. Vengan smiled an evil and self-satisfied smile. "You don't know, do you? Thykon didn't send you; you are food. I tricked you into revealing yourself there. You see how I did that." Méabh was reminded anew of the fact that white dragons are not the cleverest of dragonkind. "What is this weapon?" she persisted. Vengan Doomstealer then proved it by delivering one of the most classic lines of a stupid villain. "You're all going to die - I may as well tell you." He explained that The Weapon was a device that would extend the winter around them now to the location in which it was put, making the land they were to conquer comfortable to them and unpleasant to the current inhabitants. From the way he spoke, it was clear he had absolutely no idea how it worked.
Gorfang broke in. "We're not slaves, and we're not food," he stated definitively. He didn't mention messengers but not even white dragons were stupid enough to think that this might be the case. Then he delivered the punch line. "Your associate is no longer with us." he concluded meaningfully. Vengan blinked. "I can see that..." he commented. Gorfang adjusted his approach. "He's dead," he clarifed, carefully not adding who was responsible until the dragons had digested the first bit. Vengan scowled. "How do I know what you say is true?" he rumbled suspiciously. Méabh casually threw him one of Thykon's inches-long teeth, which the massive dragon rather surprisingly caught. All three craned to look at it.
In the moment they were distracted, Méabh glanced at the others, catching their eyes with her disturbing opalescent gaze. She flicked her hand and the tiny red dot of a Fireball darted towards the cluster of dragons. About half-way there, it simply ceased to exist, as if Dispelled... or cast into a sphere of Anti-Magic. 
Vengan spoke again.
"This tooth is from one of our black cousins," he admitted. A moment later, the three dragons stepped forward, their muscles tensing for a charge, while the huge snow-worm's head swung backwards and forwards as if calling. No-one really needed Gorfang's cry of "Now!" as all reacted with a single thought - and stepped onto the teleportation circle. As they did so, Vengan's huge head loomed right over them, jaws open for a savage bite, and all around the circle, the snow was erupting as dozens of the snow-worms exploded out from under the surface. Peculiarly, each had glowing red spikes on his back and trailed a cloud of steam as the snow on top of him exploded into vapour - almost as if it was hot. An instant later it was all gone, and they stood back in the teleport room in Gadûhvrás.
After recovering - and shedding some now un-needed furs - the adventurers sent another Arcane Eye through the teleport to see how things now stood. In the fifteen minutes since the near miss, the dragons and snow-worms had left the area of the teleportation target. Méabh directed the sensor straight up the valley this time, further than before, and after a while a different structure came into view. Atop a cubic plinth stood a massive sphere, fifty feet across, a metal construction of struts and surface plates about half-made, with gaping holes through which the snow howled. The surface plates it did have bore a coating of a silvery metal. It was plated in mithril....
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