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A list of characters and tropes associated with Redwall.


  • Multiple Books: Click to Expand 
  • Redwall: Click to Expand 
  • Mossflower: Click to Expand 
  • Mattimeo: Click to Expand 
  • Mariel of Redwall: Click to Expand 
  • Salamandastron: Click to Expand 
  • Martin the Warrior: Click to Expand 
  • The Bellmaker: Click to Expand 
  • Outcast of Redwall: Click to Expand 
  • Pearls of Lutra: Click to Expand 
  • The Long Patrol: Click to Expand 
  • Marlfox: Click to Expand 
  • The Legend of Luke: Click to Expand 
  • Lord Brocktree: Click to Expand 
  • The Taggerung: Click to Expand 
  • Triss: Click to Expand 
  • Loamhedge
  • Rakkety Tam: Click to Expand 
  • High Rhulain: Click to Expand 
  • Eulalia!: Click to Expand 
  • Doomwyte: Click to Expand 
  • Sable Quean: Click to Expand 
  • The Rogue Crew

Abbeybeasts

  • Always Lawful Good: Whilst there are a very few individual exceptions, in general, characters from the races collectively deemed "abbeybeasts" are always the good guys, or at worse the "everday civilian" flavor of neutrality. Even the rare hostile abbeybeast groups such as the Gawtrybe squirrels are treated as more misguided than evil and worthy of redemption, whereas vermin are near-universally treated as pure evil.

Mice & Voles

Mice are the most common of the abbeybeast races and make up the largest proportion of viewpoint characters and side-characters, especially in the earlier novels. Voles are less common, and usually come off as largely the same as mice, if perhaps more likely to be jerkasses.
  • The Everyman: Mice and voles are the most "generic" of the abbeybeast races.
  • Nice Mice: Eyup. Mice represent more main heroes than any other species, and very rarely have a mean bone in their bodies.

Shrews

Similar to mice, but smaller and more pugnacious, shrews tend to keep more to themselves, usually being associated with their own roving nomadic culture, the Guerilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower.
  • Battle Cry: The Guosim shrews go into battle chanting refrains of "Log-a-log-a-log" (extending it as far as possible), which incidentally also refers to the title of their chieftain, the Log-a-Log.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The Guerilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower is often shorted to "the Guosim".
  • Pintsized Powerhouse: Despite being smaller even than mice, shrews are one of the most militaristic and warlike of the abbeybeast races, with all shrews being skilled in the use of daggers, rapiers, bows and slings.

Hedgehogs

Well-armored with their prickly spines, hedgehogs are found in many roles, but have a particular association with being skilled chefs and brewers, to the point that they are preferred for the role of Cellarmaster at Redwall Abbey.
  • Big Eater: Hedgehogs are often characterized as loving plenty of food and drink.
  • Supreme Chef: Whilst there have been very well-known hedgehog chefs, they're actually more associated with creating liquor than food.

Moles

Generally seen as the most docile of the abbeybeasts, moles are rarely fighters. They speak their own distinctive dialect.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: They live underground, have thick accents, tend to be better-versed than other abbeybeast species in engineering and construction, and are often portrayed as being smaller than a lot of other species... yeah, they're about as close as you can get, given the setting. The main departure is that moles tend to be fairly even-tempered and are rarely warriors, although fighting moles are not unheard of.
  • Resourceful Rodent: When there's a construction project to be done, expect at least one mole to be heading it. To further their image as industrious workers, their leader gets the title "Foremole" (a Redwall-ized version of "foreman").
  • The Unintelligible: Moles are the only abbeybeast race to normally be given a Funetik Aksent, and in-universe many other races often struggle with understanding their dialect.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: On the vast menu of Redwall Abbey dishes, "deeper 'n' ever turnip-n-tater-n-beetroot pie" is generally called out the most as both a mole invention and a mole favorite.

Squirrels

The second largest and second most aggressive of the "common" abbeybeasts, next to the otters.
  • Demoted to Extra: While squirrels did have a defined society and role in some early books like otters, shrews, and hares, this was increasingly phased out over time, and in many books they get lumped in with the "generic" abbeybeasts with little to make them stand out.
  • Forest Ranger: They tend to fit the archetype by being the primary arboreal species and specializing in bows.
  • Master Archer: Whilst not the only race to use bows, squirrels in particular tend to be known for their skills at archery, especially in the inevitable siege.

Otters

Largest and most warlike of the "common" abbeybeasts, second only to badgers, otters tend to become the champions around which abbeybeast fighters rally in times of trouble.
  • The Big Guy: Next to the badgers, otters will usually be the biggest, strongest, and most martially capable members of the cast.
  • Masochist's Meal: In dining scenes, otters often love to prove how tough they are by spicing up their Hotroot Soup to ever-more eyewatering, tongue-blistering levels of heat.
  • Playful Otter: Most of the time, otters are cheerful sorts that enjoy life... unless they're pushed into a fight.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Whilst otters naturally love seafood, their particular favorite is a spicy shrimp soup called "Shrimp and Hotroot Soup", often shortened to "Hotroot Soup". Any otter character will guzzle this by the bowlful, and even have full-fledged Eating Contests with it.
  • Weapon Specialization: The vast majority of otters favor javelins or slings, likely due to their aquatic lifestyle demanding weapons that don't rust and still work when wet.

Badgers

Rarest, largest and strongest of all the abbeybeast races, badgers are the most isolated from abbeybeast society. Badgers of either sex may appear as the rulers of Salamandastron, a coastal fortress inside of an extinct volcano that exists to defend the Mossflower coastline from seafaring invaders and pirates. Female badgers may appear as the "mother superiors" of Redwall Abbey.
  • Battle Cry: Like the hares they lead, badgers are known for shouting "Eulalia!" when in battle.
  • The Berserker: Whilst the mysterious berserk fury known as the Bloodwrath can appear in the other abbeybeast races, badgers are universally afflicted with it.
  • The Big Guy: Badgers tower over all other races that have ever appeared in the setting, and are notorious for their strength.
  • Made of Iron: Between their size, their stamina and their tendency to fly into Bloodwrath, badgers can typically endure ridiculous amounts of punishment before dying.
  • One-Man Army: The general rule of thumb is that nothing less than a large army of vermin can take down a badger in a straight fight.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Male badgers are almost always characterized as proud, fearsome warriors, or at least as having been one at some point in their lives. Female badgers are proportionally less so, mainly due to many of the ones seen in the books being Redwall's equivalent of a mother superior, though they're definitely not to be trifled with when push comes to shove.

Hares & Rabbits

Hares are a race known for their eccentric personalities, their love of food, and the fact that they are deadly warriors despite both of these traits. Hares rarely live in Redwall Abbey itself, and instead usually keep isolated homesteads. Their overarching society is the Long Patrol, a nomadic militia based out of the coastal fortress of Salamandastron that struggles to keep back the pirates and invaders that frequently threaten Mossflower. Rabbits appear much less frequently, and are usually characterized as cowardly and pacifistic; calling a hare a rabbit is a grievous insult.
  • Badass Army: The Long Patrol is the definitive example in the series, single-handedly keeping the shores safe from seafaring vermin for generations.
  • Big Eater: Hares are legendary in-universe for how much they enjoy eating.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Pun aside, whilst hares are notoriously eccentric, usually being send-ups of old-school British army officers, they are still ferocious fighters who will sell their lives to defeat their foes, and whose skills means they come out on top more often than not.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Rabbits mostly appear in the earliest books and are largely phased out in favor of hares once the series hits its stride.
  • I Am Not Weasel: Do not call a hare a rabbit if you know what's good for you.
  • Officer and a Gentleman: Long Patrol officers are, to a man, extremely polite and well-spoken.
  • Plucky Comic Relief: Hares, particularly as a token member of a group, tend to be rather silly and provide most of the book's humorous dialogue. Mind you, this rarely makes them less effective in a fight.
  • Suave Sabre: High-ranking hares tend to favor sabres to go with their rather posh demeanors.

Vermin

  • Always Chaotic Evil: Whilst a small number of vermin have shown some sympathetic traits or the possibility of redemption, by and large the vermin races exist only to harass the abbeybeasts and get killed off.
  • Funetik Aksent: Being rooted in British lower-class stereotypes, the vermin races are most likely to talk in a coarse manner that is rendered by spelling how it is pronounced in the literature. There are abbeybeasts who talk this way too, but it's much less universal compared to the vermin.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: It doesn't happen often, but it has occasionally been shown that vermin armies are made up of unwilling conscripts who fight because their leaders will torture and kill them if they don't.

Rats

The most common of the vermin races, rats can be found both on land and at sea. In fact, they are the most prominently naval of the vermin races, leading to the nickname "searats".
  • The Goomba: Zigzagged. Rats tend to be the cannon fodder of any vermin horde where they appear, due to being the smallest of the vermin races, but at the same time rats have been shown to rise to positions of leadership even amongst mixed-race hordes, starting with the very first Big Bad of the franchise, Cluny the Scourge.
  • Swarm of Rats: Individually, rats tend to be the smallest and weakest of the vermin races. In numbers, though, that can change, and there are usually a lot of rats.
  • You Dirty Rat!: One of the most iconic examples of the evil rat in fantasy literature.

Foxes

Largest of the vermin races, foxes often rise to high prominence in hordes.
  • The Big Guy: Foxes are usually depicted as the biggest of the vermin, although they pale in size compared to otters and badgers.
  • Cunning Like a Fox: Their higher competence compared to the usual mustelids and rats means they tend to be smarter and more conniving than the rest. Females in particular have a high tendency to occupy the Evil Genius role.
  • Elite Mooks: Generally, they tend to be less numerous and more competent than other vermin species, sometimes achieving Mook Commander status.
  • Foul Fox: Notably, foxes are the only common vermin species to not have a single member portrayed sympathetically.

Mustelids

A grab-bag of races, the most commonly seen mustelids in Mossflower are weasels, stoats and ferrets. More exotic breeds, such as pine martens or wolverines, are usually only seen as high-ranked individuals.
  • The Everyman: Mustelids tend to be the most generic of the vermin races, with little differentiating weasels, stoats and ferrets.
  • Evil Counterpart: Technically, otters are part of the mustelid family too, but otters are considered abbeybeasts and weasels, stoats and ferrets are all considered vermin.
  • Wicked Weasel: Mustelid horde leaders tend to be rather cunning and conniving in addition to being rotten to the core. Mooks tend to lean more toward Dumb Muscle, but generally aren't any less nasty for it.

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