Storing blood?

[Ireth]

Butterfly: See my comments above. Vampires can't digest congealed blood.

Kit: That's true. Bacterial contamination would probably be the biggest problem, given the era. I'm not sure exactly what chemical breakdown would do, but it could be fun to figure out.

DavidJae: There's an idea with potential. What would the interdependent relationship be, vampire/human or vampire/vampire?

 

[DavidJae]

Vampire and human, probably. Either love or a very interdependent relation that is mutually beneficial. The strength of that relationship feeds him with mental and emotional sutainance, which is what a Vampire truly feeds on. The blood is just a craving, like drugs or chocolates

 

[Ireth]

Hm. I've always thought it was the nutrients in the blood that the vampire needed for survival. Having them able to feed on emotions etc. is interesting, especially given the backstory of the first vampire, who fell in love with and married a human girl (and then accidentally slaughtered her in their wedding bed. Oops). I'd likely have to do some retconning to get it into that story, as there's a lot more to "canon" than just the novel I'm working on at present, but it might work. At the point I'm at in fleshing out the backstory in detail, Conall and the human girl haven't achieved strong mutual affection yet -- the love is mostly on Conall's side at the moment.

I could definitely play with the idea with regards to the first vampire, who has an unhealthy obsession with the wives he killed by accident (the death of the first one led him to be turned into a vampire in the first place) -- over the centuries this has morphed into a hyperactive sex drive and the keeping of vampire women with green eyes and red hair (traits both of his wives shared) as sex slaves. He could derive the bulk of his sustenance from that.

Though that might create a problem elsewhere, as a large part of Conall's modus operandi is encouraging other vampires to feed from humans rather than animals, and if the secret is just to have strong emotional relationships with them, that doesn't work. If that were so, the protagonist of my novel would never need to leave his family, and him leaving them is the whole point of the first chapter that kicks off the rest of the story.

 

[Devor]

Devor: True, but how much blood is there in a rabbit? He'd have to drain a lot of them for one meal, I would think, no matter how fast they breed.

According to a weird combination of google searches and some calculator punching, about 114 mL, or 1/40th the blood found in a person.

I bring it up again because you might find it best to use a mix of solutions instead of relying solely on one, especially if this is a main POV character. He could eat a rabbit because it's fresh and he needs a pick me up for when he goes out hunting deer, and when he returns unsuccessful, he resorts to a bag of chemically stored blood goo.

 

[edd]

depends you thought about :
1) self biting to sustain ones self?
2) hibernation of some sort, humans can do it so why not vampires?
3) iron may be? (Anaemia due to iron deficiency)

 

[Kit]

depends you thought about :
1) self biting to sustain ones self?

That's not going to sustain you any longer than drinking your own pee. We eat and drink things because the body needs a substance that it is getting low on. We continually excrete stuff- not just in the bathroom, but sweat and breath and cellular metabolisms. You can't keep replacing those nutrients out of a closed system. A closed system cannot survive.

 

[Ireth]

According to a weird combination of google searches and some calculator punching, about 114 mL, or 1/40th the blood found in a person.

I bring it up again because you might find it best to use a mix of solutions instead of relying solely on one, especially if this is a main POV character. He could eat a rabbit because it's fresh and he needs a pick me up for when he goes out hunting deer, and when he returns unsuccessful, he resorts to a bag of chemically stored blood goo.

Indeed. It's the mix that needs perfecting, I suppose.

depends you thought about :
1) self biting to sustain ones self?
2) hibernation of some sort, humans can do it so why not vampires?
3) iron may be? (Anaemia due to iron deficiency)

1) Self-biting -- see Kit's response.
2) That's something I hadn't thought of. It would definitely be useful in winter when food would be hard to get to.
3) I'm not sure my vampires would have a problem with anemia, since iron in its purer forms harms them, much like it does the Fae. This leads me to assume that the iron in the blood they drink is a large part of what their bodies cannot metabolize, and would be in the waste product they excrete after feeding.

That's not going to sustain you any longer than drinking your own pee. We eat and drink things because the body needs a substance that it is getting low on. We continually excrete stuff- not just in the bathroom, but sweat and breath and cellular metabolisms. You can't keep replacing those nutrients out of a closed system. A closed system cannot survive.

Exactly. It'd be like a vampire drinking the waste product they excrete after their bodies are done using the nutrients from the blood they drink, which is basically pee (though it smells more like poop). It just wouldn't work.

 

[Rikilamaro]

Drinking in sips isn't very practical either; he needs bigger meals to keep his thirst under control. How long would you be able to survive on a mouthful of bread and a sip of water at intervals?

Technically a few weeks, but I get your point. If he's living somewhere with wild creatures about couldn't he herd those into an enclosure? How long has he lived there? Maybe he solved this dilemma earlier in the story and now you have a wonderful herd of sheep all set up and routinely ready to go?

 

[Ireth]

Technically a few weeks, but I get your point. If he's living somewhere with wild creatures about couldn't he herd those into an enclosure? How long has he lived there? Maybe he solved this dilemma earlier in the story and now you have a wonderful herd of sheep all set up and routinely ready to go?

I'm still trying to get him to that point in the story, which is the problem. He's not going to reach the castle where he'll set up his new home for at least another chapter (I'm currently in the middle of chapter 2), so when he gets there he'll have to start from scratch. I want to go into a bit of detail with exactly how he begins settling into the castle and creating a sustainable food supply before external forces start to press in. I'll probably skim over a couple of years after that during the course of the story, but it's getting him started that's the real problem.