Factions

Exodus Fleet
A ragtag assemblage of cobbled together ships, flown by members of various species displaced, and in some cases created by, human terraforming. There are several million ships, nearly forty thousand of which would be considered capital class military vessels, housing billions of travelers ranging from Space Shuttle scale craft up to moon sized worldships. Buster hails from here, and her immediate family, as well as nearly all of her species, all live on ships within the fleet.
The fleet moves constantly and are considered a nuisance in civilized space, as the members of which consider any ship they claim to be theirs regardless of who else tries to hold claim over it. legal or otherwise. as such they're viewed as scavengers at best, and pirates at worst. they'll arrive in a system, harvest what they need, usually from any asteroids or unclaimed moons in the system, salvage any wrecks or abandoned structures, and leave. if you make an enemy of them, expect to find the fringes of your space being raided in hit and run attacks every time it's left unguarded until it's picked clean.

Reimann Corporation
Founded 1300 years before the Calamity, the Reimann Corporation has been the leader in biotechnology, computing, and weapons development in charted space. Starting as a humble industrial hardware company, the Reimann Company cleverly diversified and adapted to the ever-changing space age economics. Lax regulations during the Old Federation allowed the Reimann Company to mercilessly buy up new startups to form a monopoly, both horizontally and vertically by 500 BC.
By 300 BC, the Reimann company owned many company planets and outposts in the Caedonia galaxy and have initiated many blackbox projects involving gene editing and artificial intelligence development for the goal of 'Accelerating evolution.' Their actions ultimately were unsustainable as unrest caused by the funneling of money into these projects ultimately resulted in catalyzing in the largest socioeconomic collapse in history, the Calamity.

United Merchants Guild
Even long before the Calamity, merchants fed up with poorly defended trade routes throughout the Caedonia Galaxy have illegally installed weapons onto their cargo ships. After the Collapse, a brief period of chaos and piracy was followed by the establishment of a loose confederation as the the Guild Tribunal under Lord Amadeus Hess consisting of former admirals, captains, and trade bosses. Despite this, the members of the Merchant's Guild have earned themselves a reputation as ruthless pirates in this short period of time, a brand which Lord Hess and his successors desperately tried to shake up.
Recent threats by the Reimann Corporation have resulted in an uneasy truce with the New Galactic Federation, the toothless remnant of the former government, to halt aggressive Reimann Corporation expansion and quell raider attacks from non-Guild members.