From the introduction:
You are a creature feared and respected throughout the Midwest, an engineered killing machine designed to be the perfect soldier for the pre-War American government. Closely related to the larger hairless Deathclaws found in the coastal regions, your ancestors were created from the common Deathclaw progenitor genetic blueprint to fulfill the military’s requirements for an animalistic super soldier. While your cousins (tarrasquis horribilis) were designed to be hulking, implacable monsters, your species (tarrasquis fidelis) was designed to be intelligent enough to understand orders but not enough to question them. In the Midwest, “Deathclaw is used to refer to the hairy variety, and the large coastal variety is a “Terrorclaw”. To whatever extent hairy Deathclaws are known outside the Midwest, they are known as “Shadowclaws”.