The Founders

The Founders are a changeling race that established an expansive and powerful interstellar authority in the Gamma quadrant known only as the Dominion.  The "Great Link" is the foundation of their society.  It provides a meaning to their existence.  It is the merging of form and thought, the sharing of idea and sensation.  It is the consciousness of their civilization, the passing of their history and the very definition of community.  The Great Link tells of shapeshifters who roamed the stars for many years in an effort to accumulate knowledge of the galaxy.  These shapeshifters searched out other worlds in peace, but were met with suspicion, hatred, and violence.  They were hunted, beated, and killed out of the humanoid fear of their metamorphic abilities.  In defiance, the shapeshifters took the name "changelings," a derogatory term given to them by humanoids, and retreated into isolation to found the Dominion.  Now recognized as the Founders, the Changelings set themselves the task of "imposing order on a chaotic universe."  They employed the Vorta as the chief administrators of the Dominion and genetically engineered the savage Jem'Hadar to enforce their edicts.  The Changeling generally refer to humanoids as "solids" or monoforms who are incapable of experiencing the joys of the Great Link.

Despite their appetite for order, the Founders desire to learn more about other races.  They dispersed 100 infant or "newly formed" changelings throughout the galaxy in a reconnaissance effort with the urge to return home to the Omarion Nebula implanted in their genetic codes.  Due to the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole, Deep Space Nine's Odo became the first to return home, albeit 300 years ahead of schedule.