See Orion - Father of the Qual

I will tell you how it all began. How everything began with Orion and the Qual. 

Though their story spans many thousands of years, I will endeavour to condense it into a few short minutes. No doubt tempting the wrath of my own personal Gods in the process. 

For millennia, seven great and noble races existed on seven rich and beautiful worlds. Each of their vastly different cultures thrived with music, art, sport and all the myriad other things that make a people successful and proud. It had been this way since time began. 

Though each race differed dramatically from the next, they all originated from the same gene pool. Because of this each of the seven races differed physically but remained very similar mentally.

Birth
Only one in ten thousand children would be born Qual, caused by the random mixing of genes. Members of the other six families saw being Qual as the next stage of their evolution. 

Appearance
In brief, the Qual are tall, the smallest of them easily peaking six and half feet and the tallest ever known, reaching eight. They are as pale as ivory and beautiful as angels, with an angel's same serenity and aura of power. To gaze upon a Qual, is to gaze upon perfection. Aside from their obvious physical superiority, advanced strength, sense, agility and stamina (able to recover even from the act of beheading !), the Qual cannot age and are therefore classed Immortal. If this wasn't enough, the mental powers of the other races pale compared to most Qual's. 

Now the Qual shunned open use of technology, except where it could be incorporated into everyday things without intrusion. They believed in the old ways, of learning trades, memorising everything and using simple hand weapons like the sword and bow. 

Gate Force and Void
On the Qual home world, a paradise planet of sky boats and floating cities, there stood an ancient artefact predating (inconceivably) even the Qual. Two mammoth obsidian obelisks, standing eighty feet in height and thirty feet apart. No one knew their origin, their strange structure impervious to any damage or probing. 
Between the two obelisks hung a curtain of absolute void. Anything entering it would disappear and be lost forever. The Qual had discovered long ago that this void was a power that could be tapped. They manufactured twelve black rings to be worn by the Qual Inner Council, each ring able to channel the unimaginable power of void. 

These rings became a symbol of Qual domination, bestowing the wearer with almost unlimited power. 

One year before the Great Cataclysm, human's appeared on the Leathiadorian home world. At first these strange creatures were hunted, but as more appeared, they became a growing concern. The Qual court soon interrogated some captives and learned the following; 

The humans were a group of rebels, fleeing their own system after failing an attempted take-over. This rebel faction believed in the purity of man-kind; whereas the other humans were happy to share with their alien brothers, the rebels believed in alien conspiracies. 

You can imagine how these rebels reacted, travelling through a strange gateway, hoping to escape punishment for their crimes, but only ending up surrounded by more aliens. 

The Qual saw terrible anger and hatred in these humans and tried to contain them. But the humans possessed extraordinary technology and mental powers. They could program their minds in a way the Qual could not. More amazingly they could link dozens of minds in a concert, effectively magnifying their power beyond the sum of all parts. 

These skills fascinated the Qual, who immediately tried befriending some of the more approachable rebels. It wasn't long before the Qual Lords began seducing the female humans to sire more potent offspring. (The new children would be loyal to both human and Qual, but privy to human's mental powers and fully operant.) 

Of course some of the humans resisted and after great anguish and adventure won through to the Qual Homeworld of Sha'lean. One of them, a devout purist called Taylar Deville absolutely hated the Qual and carried a terrible device, capable of decimating a small continent. 

He activated the device where the Qual would feel it most, just in front of their Void gate. An immense implosion rocked the Qual home world, killing all bar a few hundred. 

This is how the Age of Stars ended.