This is the Chiran flagship Liang with her sister Shuang in the background.

While Aludran stealth technology gave their ships more modern aesthetics, Chira retained an edge in development of fire control systems, composite armour and defensive systems, and their new battleships were the first vessels to replace conventional guns with mass drivers.

In Chiran mythology, Liang and Shuang are spirits from the old Northern tribes originally imagined as frost giants who could control the weather and offer protection from harsh storms. When the Northern temple was established they were re-imagined as the guardians of the Garden of the Dead, the place beyond the great Shirai gates where the spirits await the forming of the world to be. The two are usually depicted as vast living bronze statues, each with three heads, six arms and three tails.

The Prophet Zhae did not believe in them because she thought the Shirai would never permit evil to pass through them in the first place, but they are still venerated in the North and it is common to see talismans and wards of protection which invoke them, since they are still believed to influence the mortal world.

The garden itself is the first layer of the afterlife. When the worlds were divided following the failed First Creation that lead to a chaotic word where all things existed as one, the hereafter was complete darkness; the first mortal to die bought beauty and light back to that world with her, and she found a single tiny flower and a single ray of light waiting for her. Now it is said to be a garden more wonderful than any in the mortal world, lit by a thousand thousand thousand lanterns and centred on the great temple where the goddesses dwell. When the second creation is finished and the two worlds become one, the sun will rise in the Garden of the Dead; until then, it is always night there.

The darkness in the spirit world was originally said to be why Chirans are born blind, though that's not focused on very much anymore since they discovered some species aren't, aside from some temples treating the permanently blind as reincarnated ancestors and being very, very kind towards them.