The Origin of the Wild Colonial Universe

(or... How did those space cowboys end up on Fenris?)

Out beyond the Oort cloud, humans discovered an ancient artifact—a Jump Gate, giving them access to millions of habitable worlds.

And so the Great Diaspora began.  Explorers, pilgrims, refugees, and more struck out to stake claims on the new worlds.

And what of the aliens that built the gates?  Extinct.  As was every other sapient species.  Humans found the ruins of their cities, their bizarre machines that no longer worked, monuments with a hundred different alien faces, and evidence of a millennia of a war.  A war to extinction. 

So humans were alone.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The Jump Gates stopped working.

All the children of Earth, all the colonies near and far were cut off.  Some survived, even thrived.  Some died out.  No one knew what happened or why.

When Old Earth finally returned to the stars using Jump Drives instead of Jump Gates, almost a thousand years had passed.  Things were not the way they used to be.

Now almost two thousand years after humans discovered the Jump Gates, this is the world of the Wild Colonials, who aren’t easily tamed.