Chinese stealth armor

This is an overview article, listing content appearing in multiple Fallout media. For information specific to a given game or TV series, consult the table on the right.

Gameplay articles Operation: Anchorage Chinese stealth armor Fallout: New Vegas Chinese stealth armor Creation Club Chinese stealth armor Wastelanders Chinese stealth armor Van Buren Chinese stealth armor

Chinese stealth armor, formally known as Hei Gui stealth armor, is a class of advanced stealth technology invented by the pre-War nation of China, where it was deployed during the Sino-American War by the People's Liberation Army against the armed forces of the United States of America. The limited number of intact units following the nuclear apocalypse have been acquired and used by various factions around the wasteland, appearing multiple times in the Fallout series.

Background

Composed of a dark black, form-fitting bodysuit with an opaque faceplate, the Hei Gui stealth armor is designed for one thing: making the operator nigh-invisible for high-risk espionage operations. Harnessing Chinese expertise in the field of stealth technology, the suit contains a man-portable device generating a modulating field that transmits the reflected light from one side of an object to another; the result is near-perfect active camouflage. The bodysuit is designed to maximize the effect by simplifying the wearer's silhouette and creating flat surfaces where possible to reduce the complexity of the area being camouflaged. Deployed to soldiers of the People's Liberation Army during the Sino-American War, under the designation Hei Gui, the suits allowed the Chinese military to counter American brute force with subterfuge and deception. Despite this, some units were captured in battle, allowing their technology to be studied and reverse-engineered by the Americans.

Despite its tactical success rate, in fact, the suit was just barely out of the prototype stage when the conflict with America began, with the refinement of the technology varying. Some Chinese infiltrators that set foot on American soil, such as those captured in Nevada during the Hoover Sabotage, used an early generation model of the suit that lacked the ability to cloak, while others like the elite Crimson Dragoon troopers deployed to Alaska during the Battle of Anchorage used cutting-edge iterations capable of long-lasting invisibility.

Utilizing captured Hei Gui units, the underlying principle of bending light was reverse-engineered by the United States to the effect of producing two American entrants to the field of stealth technology: while Robert Mayflower's studies of the suits' properties allowed him to create the portable, but unstable Stealth Boy 3001 units, researchers with the Nevada-based Big MT company focused more on the suit itself and its stealth-enhancing properties; they resorted to dismantling the Chinese suits and then developing a new stealth suit design from scratch, resulting in the creation of two prototypes prior to the Great War: a Mark I and Mark II stealth suit.

Models

Crimson Dragoon armor

Gameplay articles: Operation: Anchorage, Creation Club, Wastelanders

To outfit their military for war against the Americans, the Chinese spent some time redesigning the stealth armor before issuing it to their elite Crimson Dragoons to deploy into Alaska. Though the elite troopers wreaked havoc on American forces, at least one unit was captured intact by the Americans and sent to several companies for study and reverse-engineering. One of them ended up being stored at the Virtual Strategic Solutions facility in Washington, D.C. owned by General Constantine Chase, where it remained stored in the secure vault until 2277 when the Lone Wanderer completed the Anchorage Reclamation simulation and unsealed the vault. Another was retained by Agent Mochou during her infiltration mission in Appalachia and remained in her possession after she became a ghoul.

Early-generation stealth armor

Gameplay articles: Fallout: New Vegas, Van Buren

An early model of the Hei Gui armor that notably lacked the ability to create a stealth field around the wearer when sneaking. Two were assigned to a pair of infiltrators that attempted to sabotage the Hoover Dam in Nevada, but they ended up captured and executed, with their suits left in storage within the dam until the 2270s when they were found by soldiers of the New California Republic, later ending up misplaced in a storeroom with radioactive waste.

During the Hoover Sabotage, Americans caught their first glimpses of China's elite soldiers wearing the stealth armor. Because Sub-Level 1C was sealed, several of the Chinese soldiers' bodies remained in the compound.

Notes

The unique grenade machinegun, Mercy in Fallout: New Vegas has "Hei Gui Bye Bye" written on its chassis, though what significance it has to the armor class is unknown.

Behind the scenes

• No specific pronunciation or spelling for the name "Hei Gui" was given in the design documents for Van Buren, where the term appeared for the first time, without diacritics. The author of the term seems to have created the name in English first, then used a Chinese dictionary to translate the words separately, combining the symbols for the color black (黑) and ghost (鬼), and then romanizing the result, arriving at Hei Gui. Unfortunately, the resulting term, hēi guǐ (黑鬼), is actually an idiom used as a racial slur against people of African descent in China, rather than literally meaning Black Ghost.
  • The intended meaning of the armor class's name is never given in the games and was only stated by Joshua Sawyer in a forum post, noting that it was a step up from the UAF armor of the federal Unamerican Activities Force. As such, the exact meaning of the word is not defined in any released game.
  • Alternatively, it can be pronounced as Hēi guī (黑龟), which means "black turtle." The Vermillion Bird (a crimson-feathered avian with feathers wreathed in fire, likened to a phoenix) and Black Turtle are two of the Four Symbols constellations in Chinese mythology, so it can be inferred these became official military designations for corresponding units in the People's Liberation Army.

References

Non-game