Tales of the Homelands
Many years ago, 112 worlds existed far and wide across the Multiverse, each linked to one another by a system of obelisk shaped gateways. Originally created by an unknown race of ancients the gates were later adapted and used by the children of Orion, a sterile immortal race known as the Qualianor.
For thousands of years the Qual ruled peacefully over the other six races in their part of space by using the power of the gates to enhance their minds and bend reality to their will. But when Orion, their Father, chose to leave them to once more explore the stars, the Qual changed. Conducting brutal games for entertainment and distancing themselves more and more from the other 'lowly' less perfect races, the Qual soon became an object of hatred.
Then one day humankind arrived through the gate system and with it brought mind powers that didn't rely on the gates. Humans were put in the games, enslaved and then later freed and offered Qual companions so that the Qual might breed, free their minds from the gates and multiply.
But by then it was too late. The humans retaliated by destroying the source of all Qualianor power - The Master Gate, and by doing so accidentally began the collapse of the whole world gate system.
Every world touched by a gate began to fall like dominoes, suffering complete environmental collapse as the slowly fell in upon itself. Whole civilisations perished but a few from each world survived the only way they could, by entering the gate network before their world became unliveable.
From world to world they fled, growing in numbers from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. Men, women and representives from a hundred different races, fleeing for their lives ahead of each gates collapse until after five long and terrible years they reached the very last gate and managed to close it behind them.