>>7835433No. Herbert made no mention of armor for them at all. Stillsuits and robes is all; armored stillsuits are a brand new invention. One of the things that made the Fremen (and especially the Fedaykin) so terrifying is that it was always implied they went toe-to-toe with Imperial Sardaukar and took them out with relative ease with minimal weapons against cutting edge Imperial tech.
I gave my Dune books to my niece a couple years ago when she got on a science fiction kick, so I can't look it up exactly at the moment. But, to sort of paraphrase the first battle encounter between Fremen and Sardaukar, the Fremen set up an ambush in the desert near some sort of cliff walls (maybe near one of the sietchs?). The Sardaukar are utterly decimated, with virtually no casualties among the Fremen, very little weapons fire, just the bare minimum to keep the operation quiet & the rest is basically done hand-to-hand with knives. The Fremen kill almost all the Sarduakar, none escape, and manage to capture several, something that has basically never happened before in the entire history of the Sardaukar. Stilgar remarks casually to Paul upon reporting their success and that there are a couple of captives for Paul's amusement: "They fought well, it was somewhat challenging."
Fitting them out with hi-tech armor & weapons really diminishes just how utterly badass the Fremen are, and the Fedaykin are a God-tier level beyond regular Fremen. They are supposed to be not only trained & hardened by their life on Arrakis and the Bene Gesserit religious doctrine embedded in their culture, but humans in general are supposed to have benefited from ten thousand years of Bene Gesserit breeding manipulation. The Fremen of Arrakis in particular are supposed to be some of the most superior genetic examples of humanity in existence.
I'm beginning to get outright pissed off with some of the liberties taken. Feels like they hired Micheal Bay as an "action consultant" to retard everything down.
