Portals in the Temple (Zenthus, stay out)

[Laserlight]

My bronze age party will sooner or later get to a temple of Mercury, and I want that temple to include portals to other settings. Two questions:

a) what should the portals look like? It shouldn't be something suicidal (sacrifice yourself in the cenote"); it should ideally be something not easily blocked (because undead are using the gates to expand to new worlds), and I don't want the reaction to be "ah, we're in stargate SG1".

b) I need descriptions of the destinations, as seen by bronze age Atlanteans, for places that include Renaissance Italy, L5R Rokugan, caveman-and-dinosaurs, and mammoth-riding-viking-fleeing-glaciers. The descriptions should be accurate, as far as they go, but can be opaque; the guy who linked the portals and gave the first descriptions was not necessarily sane. "Land of giant walking walrus with butterfly ears" might do for Mammoth-land, for example. What say you?

[brian 333]

This portal leads to a world of ruins and desolate wastes ruled by nomadic barbarians who ride upon howling golem chariots.

(Mad Max World)

Beyond this portal many islands float majestically in an infinite sky, some bound one to the other by great gilded chains, others floating free. Thousands can be seem in any direction. Some appear uninhabited while others appear to be cities.

(The undead have begun colonizing the nearest.)

The icy wastes beyond this portal is home to monsterous beasts, but beneath the ice caverns of immense size shelter thin blue people who live and farm around the hot springs.

(Star Trek's Andoria)