The New Paradigm (Novum Paradigma) is a religion-driven militaristic empire and can be compared the The Covenant in Halo if you don't understand a word I'm typing. Anyways, to the *actual* factionn-y stuff you probably clicked on the link to this topic for.
Lore:
Spoiler:
In the early centuries of the Pleth System, there was a race of insectoid creatures. Lacking contact with any other creature, they needed no reason to have a name for themselves, because they always knew what they were and simply called each other by their names. Over a long period of time they made many advancements. One such was space flight and slipspace travel. The discovery of slipspace made colonization of far away world feasible, but soon they had spread quite far apart. To remedy the large quantities of energy needed to travel these distances, they constructed networks of relays at locations of weak realspace which made tearing it open easier, requiring less power needed. Soon, they found that you could just put a slipspace drive in the relays so you didn't need one taking up half your ship. Although this was effective, and worked well for them for a long time, they soon encountered another space faring civilization who called themselves the Prions. The insectoids and Prions soon engaged in a war. The Prions used the insectoids' relays against them. The insectoids' reliance on the relays was their downfall. Prions destroyed and disabled relays, crippling the insectoid's ability to respond to attacks. The insectoids decided to not let their work go to waste, so they fitted a station with a relay receiver and sent it off filled with much of their technology, but before the insectoids could finish their plan they were slaughtered by the Prions who were crippled beyond repair by several spacial phenomenon. The survivors then unwittingly settled the dormant sender relay that leads to the insectoid station. Many years later, The Paradigm heard of the insectoids and their station and sought to find it. Soon after, The Paradigm fell and for many years internal strife plagued them. The result would give to The New Paradigm who saw the insectoids and their station not as a technological achievement and combat-ineffective creatures, but as gods who left them their riches. This is where the story of Novum Paradigma begins (in the RP)...