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Space Atlas
The Eye is a barred spiral galaxy about 46,000 light years across, with a circular region of active star formation (the titular eye) about 2,000 light years across. (For reference, that puts The Eye at about half the size of the Milky Way.) It contains about 40 billion stars give or take a couple billion and is home to multiple planetary alliances, monocultural colonial groups, and completely space-based trading and resource exploitation groups. There are potentially millions of habitable star systems in The Eye. Detailed maps of the galaxy are a laughable joke, and there is plenty of unexplored frontier and plenty of out-of-the way nooks for a body to get out there in space and relax... or to run into brain-eating slugs from a desert world nobody even knew existed until ten minutes ago. Good times.
For a look at some of The Eye's locals, check out here.
Galactic Federation
The Federation is your prototypical multi-world, multi-species representative democracy. It occupies a good chunk of the "south-left" quadrant, with member worlds naturally concentrated in the tail of the spiral arm. The Federation's main goals for spacefaring are primarily scientific advancement, trade, and gentle cultural warfare in cases where a new civilization might make an attractive member state. The have a (mostly) strict policy of non-interference with civilizations that are not yet capable of reliable interstellar flight, but Federation ships have a bit of a habit of bending that rule for humanitarian reasons.
The Federation has had a few clashes with the Shi'suri in the past, but since the Empire has settled down from their last round of expansion, relations are fairly cordial.
Shi'suri Empire
The Empire started out as a fairly mundane multi-world colonial venture by the Shi'suri, but when their colonists stumbled upon a rather xenophobic species that chose to wipe out the colony rather than let them retreat, the Shi'suri ended up in a war that ended with their controlling quite a few inhabited star systems and picking up a habit for absorbing new worlds whose inhabitants were almost-but-not-quite ready to become a fully fledged interstellar civilization. Their form of government closely resembles the Roman Empire at its height, only with much faster transit and communication technology. While the Shi'suri themselves retain political control via the bloodline of the Emperor/Empress, the member species all enjoy a high level of social mobility and cultural exchange.
The Shi'suri clashed with the Federation along their common border about fifty years ago, over a pre-starfaring civ that the Federation was studying and the Shi'suri were gearing up to annex. They have since called a truce, and the Shi'suri avoid interfering with civilizations... at least, those along the Federation border.
The Network
Remember those futurists who always used to insist that humanity was heading to a world in which everyone's mind was a computer program running on a massive, planetary-scale network? Yeah, there was a species that did that once.
The Network is the informal name, as the native name for the species consists these days of a long string of network addresses where their primary nodes, big Matroishka Brains that occupy a small star cluster, and a few noted secondary nodes that exist as more traditional Dyson swarms. At any given time, the majority of the Network's members are off simulating things in their own conceptual backyard, but the quasi-hivemind is full of individuals who enjoy space exploration and go at it with gusto and a wide range of mechanical bodies. Like the Borg from Star Trek, they are always eager to meet new species and get a chance to "ghost" them on into their network, adding diversity to the Network's thoughts. Unlike the Borg, they're a lot more polite about it and just as open to more traditional cultural and trade exchange.
The Network occupies an important spot as a neutral party in galactic politics, as they offer communications bandwidth and cloud storage for other civilizations.
Megacorps
Not a political entity per se, but there are a large number of very large-scale companies that owe only nominal allegiance to a government and tend to function as one if they are operating away from one of the big dogs. Most of the megacorps are dedicated to resource exploitation and trade monopolies, and unless you're trying to interfere with their bottom line they're quite easy to do business with.
One infamous megacorp that deserves mention is the Ishimura Mining Corp. They are infamous not for their shady dealings, but for the fact their operations generally create a navigational hazard in any system in which they operate. Ishimura runs a fleet of giant planet-cracker mining ships, which do about what you'd expect. They are careful to operate solely on rocky worlds with no hope of supporting life, both because it's more efficient (no need to deal with an excess of water or organic matter gumming things up) and because it's just politically simpler. They do come under fire regularly, between those devoted to preserving star systems as they are found and those archaeological concerns who fear Ishimura is cracking planets that might have the remains of life/forgotten civilizations on them, but they don't get nearly the same hate as some of the other megacorps.
Spacers
The spacers answer to no governmental name, preferring to abandon the flags of the dirt-suckers from whence they came. Living as they do, unaligned to any planetary system, they have a marked preference for the anarchic. On the other hand, living primarily in space, as they do, they also tend to lean heavily authoritarian in a crisis as captain's word is law. Maybe it's better to describe the spacers as a loose conglomeration of very, very small dictatorial city-states. Either way, they're probably the most diverse of the major players with representatives from all the local species as well as individuals who were uniquely engineered to be able to function in space.
Spacers have control of most of the starbases and space stations that aren't military or of some similar strategic importance that they have heavy government sponsorship. The spacers are also in a constant low-level state of war with the megacorps over control of interstellar trade. On truly isolated worlds with decent starports, it's not unusual to see spacers hanging about, but once the world grows to the point of needing an organized planetary government, they book it.
Erskine Nebula
Orntell System