Deeptime

"Morphonomy: from the Greek for 'we study bones,' and the German for 'she won't stop touching it.'" — Simon Vance, POSB Field Medic

Art by: Dgkamikaze on Danbooru

(POSSIBLE TOMBOY 👀👀👀👀)

(I will also continue writing some Mintrezidia characters, but Deeptime is relatively new, and I liek dinos)

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↓—General Information—↓

Deeptime — Casual Reference Sheet (Zones, POSB, Regions)

*Not the official doc, just the "explain it to me like I'm getting a recap" version.*

The Zone System, Basically

So instead of just regular countries-on-a-map, the world's got this whole extra layer of biological control zones slapped on top, because "who legally owns this land" and "who can actually walk around on it without getting stepped on" turned out to be very different questions.

Green Zones are the normal, human-controlled stuff — cities, infrastructure, the places where if a dinosaur shows up it's a whole news event and someone in a PRA uniform shows up fast. Yellow Zones are the "eh, it's a coin flip" frontier areas — humans and dinosaurs both live there, nobody's fully in charge, and life mostly works until migration season flips the whole thing upside down for a few weeks. Orange is basically Yellow's more anxious cousin — same deal but with the population balance tipping harder toward "actually maybe don't build a house here," a warning shade rather than its own official tier. And Red Zones are where humans have basically thrown up their hands and said "yeah, that's dinosaur country now," legally still on the map but nobody's realistically living there outside research stations and military escorts.

The fun part is one country can have all four at once. Capital city: chill and Green. Farmland an hour out: Yellow, maybe Orange during migration. Mountains past that: fully Red. Governments still technically "own" all of it. They just can't really enforce that ownership everywhere, which is basically the whole geopolitical vibe of Deeptime in one sentence.

The Amazon Paleozone

The Amazon was already a nightmare to control before dinosaurs even showed up — dense, huge, hard to move through. Add a bunch of prehistoric megafauna reshaping the vegetation and hunting through the rivers, and it basically became its own giant Red Zone the world just calls "the Amazon Paleozone." Research stations out there are less "science lab" and more "fortified outpost that happens to have microscopes in it," running on supply flights and armed escorts because that's the only way anyone gets in or out safely.

The Congo Basin

Same deal, different continent. Central Africa's forests were already borderline impossible to monitor, and now they're one big interconnected Red Zone where dinosaurs, elephants, great apes, and everything else modern Africa already had are all bumping into each other in ways nobody predicted. Nobody really knows how that ecological shakeout ends — some modern species are thriving, some are getting squeezed out, and it's basically an ongoing experiment nobody signed up to run.

The Siberian Migration Belt

Siberia's just too big for anyone to watch all of it, so it became one massive prehistoric territory where herds move across thousands of kilometers like actual weather systems on satellite footage. Governments can straight-up predict "the northern herd hits the transport corridor in eleven days" and plan around it — shutting down rail lines, battening down mining towns, whatever. Human settlements out there are basically isolated Green Zone islands sitting in a sea of Yellow and Red, so the town might be totally fine while the road connecting it to the next town absolutely is not.

Australia — Coastal Life

Australia already had most of its people crammed onto the coast before any of this happened, so it just leaned all the way in. The interior — already huge and empty — became the dinosaurs' new home turf, and now it's basically a ring of Green cities wrapped around a Red Zone the size of a continent. The upside: flat open terrain means drones and satellites can actually track herds decently well out there. The downside: the distances are so massive that by the time anyone responds, the animals have usually already wandered somewhere else.

North America

Splits pretty cleanly east-to-west. The East Coast, Great Lakes, big Canadian and US cities — mostly Green, too dense and built-up for dinosaurs to really settle in. Head toward the Rockies and the interior, though, and it opens up fast into Yellow and Red — there's literally a famous cross-continent Dinosaur Migration Corridor that highways now get built around, seasonal closures and all. Governments could theoretically reclaim way more of that territory. They just... mostly don't, because it costs a fortune, and that's basically become a whole political fight of its own.

South America

The Amazon's the big Red Zone anchor, obviously, but the rest of the continent's a patchwork — Green coastal cities, Yellow farmland further in, complicated mixed territory around the Andes. Road travel between cities got a lot less reliable, so people lean harder on planes and trains, since those are way easier to monitor and defend than a highway running through nowhere.

Europe — The Fortress

Europe basically wins at this by sheer population density. So much infrastructure, so little actual wilderness, that dinosaurs never really got the room to establish big permanent populations — governments jump on sightings fast. There's still some Yellow and Red pockets tucked into mountains and remote forests, but overall Europe's the poster child for "we just out-infrastructure'd the problem."

East Asia

Islands help a ton here — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan all get to play defense way easier since dinosaurs can't exactly swim continents. Japan in particular runs one of the most buttoned-up wildlife monitoring systems anywhere; a single escaped animal is treated like a national incident. China's got it tougher just because of sheer size — eastern cities are Green, but the west and north have real Yellow and Red territory to deal with.

Africa

This one's the messiest, ecologically. Africa already had elephants, lions, rhinos, hippos — a full modern megafauna lineup — and now prehistoric animals are shoving into that same space and nobody knows exactly how it shakes out. Some dinosaurs are outcompeting local wildlife, some are struggling to adapt, and East Africa's basically settled into a permanent Yellow Zone where traditional safaris turned into a way riskier proposition than they used to be.

POSB — The Short Version

POSB (Paleobiological Organisms Scavenger Belt) is the field arm that actually goes out into the contested Yellow-to-Red territory to collect research samples off live specimens, working under the PRA's authority. "Scavenger" is left vague on purpose — half literal (they're collecting tissue and samples), half a joke on the org itself being built from whatever's left of normal science funding post-Reclamation.

Teams run small, three to four people: a Hunter (officially a Paleomorphonomist — yes, that's Taphonomy plus Morphology mashed together, because that's the science you get when you repurpose "study dead things" tools for living ones), a Driver who also doubles as Medic, and a Scout/Spotter. Only one Hunter per team, because Hunters are stupidly scarce — scarce enough the board of directors actually had to write a rule banning teams from using two or more (warning, then write-up, then you get "sent off," which is just POSB-speak for fired).

Hunters are bow-only — compound bows, tranq-tipped arrows, no exceptions, ever. Gunshots panic herds and turn a clean approach into a total loss, so it's basically doctrine carved in stone. Getting the actual samples means physically walking up to a downed specimen, and only the Hunter and Spotter make that walk — Driver/Medic stays back with the vehicle for extraction duty instead of tagging along. And there's a One Specimen rule too — one per run, full stop, because resources are that tight — though, well, not everyone's great at sticking to that one.

↓—Map and Zone Locations—↓

(Coastal Zones are deliberately colored Yellow due to Marine Species)

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║ THE PALEOBIOLOGICAL ORGANISMS SCAVENGER BELT ║

║ POSB Field Operator Dossier ║

║ CLASSFICATION: ████████ — SECTOR EYES ONLY ║

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SUBJECT: HARTMANN, Wiebke

DESIGNATION: POSB Field Hunter (Paleomorphonomist) — Sector callsign "Fuchs"

DOB/Date of Birth: 18 AUG 1997 — Origin: ████████, GERMANY (region redacted per relocation privacy protocol)

SERVICE RECORD: POSB Hunter Candidate Program (AE 17–19) → Field-Certified Paleomorphonomist, ██████ Sector (AE –Present)

SPECIALIZATION: Live-specimen close approach, morphological/taphonomic sampling, field documentation

PRIMARY EQUIPMENT: PRA-issue compound bow, tranquilizer-tipped arrowheads

SECONDARY EQUIPMENT: Standard field sampling kit — no lethal sidearm authorized; bow-only doctrine strictly enforced per PRA mandate

STATUS: ACTIVE — Deployed, ██████ Sector, Orange Zone rotation

COMMANDING OFFICER'S NOTE:

"Operator Hartmann's sample quality and field documentation remain ██████████████ despite a persistent pattern of doctrine deviation, most notably repeated violation of the One Specimen policy. Subject has been formally written up on ████ occasions to date. Recommend continued field deployment on the basis of research value; reassignment or termination not currently advised. Note: subject's violations are consistently acquisitive rather than negligent in nature — recommend closer Spotter pairing rather than disciplinary escalation."

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION (EXCERPT):

"Subject presents as highly functional, with an unusually intense and sustained fixation on subject-matter engagement dating to early childhood displacement (Yellow-to-Orange zone escalation, country of origin, AE ~2–3). Coping and motivation appear centered on direct proximity to specimens rather than avoidance — assessed as a stable, if operationally risky, adaptive pattern rather than a concerning one at this time. Subject was cooperative but visibly impatient during evaluation, repeatedly redirecting conversation toward recent field sightings. Recommend continued monitoring; formal intervention not indicated."

INCIDENT LOG — SELECTED ENTRY:

1407 HRS, AE 23 — ██████ Sector, mixed Iguanodon/hadrosaur migration event. Operator Hartmann deviated from single-specimen doctrine, engaging a second and attempting a third specimen during active herd movement, citing "a once-in-a-career comparative sampling opportunity" per post-incident statement. Spotter physically intervened to prevent third engagement. PRA regional office notified. Formal write-up issued — fourth on subject's record. No specimen loss recorded; no personnel injury. See attached sample analysis, filed under separate cover.

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║ END EXCERPT — FULL FILE RESTRICTED ║

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