"I know exactly what they were running from. An AI that became sentient went insane and blared justin bieber songs across the comm links. The only way to make it stop was to destroy your ship, the one ship whose self destruct mechanism was faulty went insane and put their ship on autopilot back to the homeworld." - rogue_ghost

Here is the fault in that theory: we would have already shunned He Who Must Not Be Named, burned all his music, and deleted any downloads there might have been.

An insect race would really suck, could you imagine the horrors of fighting a million corvette sized ships online?

I'm not sure what the creatures chasing the Vasari are, but I bet that they are behind the "corruptive influence" the Advent rebels believe have infected the unity.

Just a thought, but what about an entity along the lines of the Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm?
Organism living in phase space, Vasari experiments allowed it to transit into realspace, where it promptly started taking over everything in sight. In Cataclysm, most vessels (in campaign) didn't know other ships were infected, and thought that they were being attacked by friendlies - Imagine jumping with the dark fleet, and then suddenly they all turn on you upon arrival? 

In any case, food for thought 

lets keep this post alive just encase someone finds something

Sinperium u usually like to speculate on things how about these ideas??

 it would be cool if one of the titans ability was to spawn 2 additional special cap support ships initially they wound be part of the titan and then they would separate (with like a cool effect).... so if the titan dies then those 2 cap ships will die as well or they can sacrifice them selves to save the titan- mabe one of their abilities would be taking the damage or "blocking it" away from the titan. so at the last moment before the titan dies- they move in front of the damage and shield it sacrificing their own armor pts. so the titan would have 2 support ships just like any aircraft carrier these days cant go without support ships...  Just as an idea for SOASE 2 imagine if there was an extra titan to choose from in each race... that would be awesome.. or is they created a ship that was limited to only like 4 or something and that would be bigger then a cap and smaller then a titan or it would be a super cap ship

( For the vasari campaign) if they would make some missions- to before things happened - you would control more unique, ancient vasari ships(straight from the core of their empire) and you would seee their bases and their empire before they where on the run, and eventually experience the opening of phase space and you would try to stop whatever race that came through, but you would ultimately fail( your fleet would not listen to your commands and run or do dumb stuff because of the fear that the "race" inflicted on their minds) and then it would zoom up to current times and you once agian are either trying to flee or fight the race that is chasing you ...that would be cool as well and it would be awesome to find out how all the artifacts for scattered throughout the many planets... i assume all of them were once inhabited by an ancient and more advanced civilization and just like the Aztecs or the Mayans they dissapired... no one knows why or how..  i wonder if they could add not only the race that is chasing the vasari for SOASE 2 but another unique race... but it will be allot of work...

good idea 100% agree! it would be nice to play that advanced race! do you know if it is easy or hard to modd a titan with 2 parts, that by command can split from the titan and act indipendently (as different ships) and then can return and reattach to the titan? 

Looks like the ship from Abram's Star Trek....

Either way, nice....

Here's an idea (and maybe another slightly poetic one): Whatever they are running from has already arrived and has been here for a while. It turns everyone against each other. Splits races and creates conflict. Makes everyone's internal demons come to the surface. It happens slowly and undetectably. The Dark Fleet destroyed itself and the Vasari worlds descended into chaos and destroyed themselves. Now whatever it is that caused this has caught up and it's happening again (as evidenced by the splitting factions).

Alternatively: They're running from themselves. Their own hubris has doomed them and their civilization and destroyed itself. They can't accept this so they are imagining some entity chasing them and destroying everything it comes across when all along the entity has just been themselves. Now that they arrived in trader space it is all happening again. The system is ravaged by war and each side is now splitting and infighting until they finally destroy themselves again (tying in the name Sins of a Solar Empire)

I am glad that this Thread has been brought back to life.  I was sure that it had died forever.

They opened a wormhole to the Mirror Universe and they're running from:

I'll go for anything as long as it's not like the Bob Newhart "it was only a dream" ending.  Though a Scooby-Doo ending would be welcome:

Except that the Vasari have been running for eons.  The Advent haven't even existed that long.