I have a race of carnivorous mammals (the same from this question) for whom blood plays an extremely important role in cultural rituals. For complex cultural reasons, a member of this race (call him Fred) decides it's a good idea to preserve a few milliliters of his blood so that another member of his race will be able to perform a ritual using it several centuries later, at which point the main body of my story takes place.

The obvious problem is that blood doesn't last for centuries, so when Mr. Hero-of-the-story finally finds Fred's body, he'll have nothing to drink but a bit of brown dust. Hence, my question:

How can I keep a sample of blood recognizable after being stored for centuries?

By recognizable, I mean the blood must:

• Be liquid.

• Be a reddish color.

• Have a taste and smell that at least resemble blood, although they may have changed noticeably. It can have acquired a sour or "aged" aspect, but shouldn't smell like lilacs or gasoline. These are a very animalistic people and having it smell and taste right is going to be extremely important if the ritual is to respected.

• Ideally, change from a dark red to a bright red upon being exposed to the air, although this isn't strictly necessary.

The blood does NOT:

• Have to be actually have to be functional as blood; it's going to be ingested and digested, not infused.

• This means gas transport doesn't matter.

• It doesn't have to contain any living red or white blood cells.

Solutions involving some sort of preservational chemical additive are acceptable (this race is generally pretty backwards when it comes to technology but they have an almost alchemical aptitude for applied chemistry with minimal equipment). However I'd prefer some sort of container that could maintain the blood without a need for additives.

When Fred preserves his blood he is on the brink of death, alone in a distant corner of his realm. At his disposal, he has:

• An unrealistically powerful and portable array of chemistry equipment.

• Salt water.

• His own body.

• Sand and dust.

• Anything appropriate to his people's level of technological advancement that he can be reasonably carry on his person through a many-week long journey through a desert.

Available technology is very limited. Refined metals are not available as construction materials but they are available as chemical compounds (so having pure platinum as an ingredient in a formula is okay but an iron cannister is not). Microbes, naturally occurring compounds and animal parts are fair game, but there needs to be a good reason for them to exist and be effective preservatives.

Also worth noting is that this world is based in real-world science, there does exist one "magical" substance that, while still bound by physical laws, follows very different laws than known matter in our universe does. I don't want this substance to become a catch-all excuse for throwing realism out the window, so I don't want to say "Fred put his blood in a container fashioned out of Substance Plot Device and it froze in time" (elsewhere in universe this material actually breaks down most molecules so this wouldn't make much sense anyway). But if there's some critical step in your idea that you can't make happen using real-world chemistry, you can throw in this mystery material as a small ingredient in the bigger picture.

Edit:

I suppose it doesn't have to be a liquid while in storage as long as it's immediately convertible back to a liquid upon recovery.

If it makes any difference, it's going to be stored at extremely high elevation. Low temperature, moisture, and air pressure. No soil, but maybe a few handfuls of rock dust. And of course Fred's body, which I imagine will mummify.

posted almost 8 years ago

ApproachingDarknessFish‭

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