The Remnants are the remains or descendants of countless species that once made up The Old Order.
Having recovered after the many years of strife and chaos following its collapse, they have retained shreds of culture and distant memories of what The Old Order was, and they want it back.
They are united by that shared history and have banded together in a form of government reminiscent of The Old Order, as best they could remember it. As in its day, The Old Order held the galaxy together and kept peace among its members.
These species all participate in a senate, although longer standing non-client members have much more sway.
The Remnants still maintain that they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy. The truth is that while their access to old order tech, and their prior seats of power make them strong, they are hardly a unified people.
Much of the Remnants are segmented along political blocks, often divided by species and client species under them.
It is a system that is every bit as political and volatile as the old Roman Republic was, and yet it is still united. What keeps them all together is a deep rooted belief in the old order.
Remnants have a complex, if hard lined relationship with the rest of galactic society. Because the Remnants see themselves as having rightful claim on the galaxy border disputes are common. Individual political blocs often have private armies alongside those they contribute to the overall Remnant command. These armies are often used to expand that bloc’s territory, to the downfall of their neighbors.
In other cases, the Remnants do bring civilizations into their senate peacefully, or with minimal conflict. For as much conquest and harm that they have done, the Remnants have also stepped in to bring peace and order to places out of control, saving species from extinction, and ending wars.
Each bloc, even some individual species, holds any old order technology that they find in a vice grip, the most valuable being ancient manufacturing centers capable of creating equipment to be used across their empire. All this tech is protected against copy by incredibly sophisticated macromolecular circuitry and auto-disassemblers, only a few of which have been cracked well enough to use across the empire.
The Remnant military is vast and powerful, especially when a combination of blocs grant them access to a variety of old order technology. Different armies are put together by the senate, or regional senates towards different tasks, often made up of various blocs that support them.
But for all that power, they often stretch themselves thin, since the galaxy is theirs by right, they feel they also have the responsibility to protect it.
This is why when the massive Andromedan Expeditionary Army invaded, the Remnants did not hesitate to respond when they saw the extent of the threat. A fact which likely saved the galaxy from a nightmare empire, even if, for all that might, all they could do was fight the Andromedans to a stalemate.