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"No doubt your sword is indeed a beautiful thing. It is a tribute to whoever forged it in bygone ages. There are very few such swords as this one left in the world, but remember, it is only a sword, Matthias! It contains no secret spell, nor holds within its blade any magical power. This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it."
Squire Julian Gingivere, Redwall (1986)

A lengthy series of books by Brian Jacques, about a fantasy world in which all kinds of animals are the equivalents of people: they wear clothes, live in buildings, have humanlike societies, et cetera. Yet they also retain some of their animal natures, which usually manifest as specific skills: such as moles being expert workmen, especially at digging, and otters being skilled swimmers and shrimp fishermen.

The series centers on Redwall Abbey, a commune devoted to peace, though many who live there are quite capable of defending themselves if attacked. The books take place across a vast time period that may span centuries (it's difficult to tell since the characters measure time in ill-defined "seasons"). Most are complete stand-alone stories, so they can mostly be read in any order. In fact, for a while, Jacques wrote the stories wildly out of chronological order, though in his final years, he set each book further ahead in time than the last one. Only four books (Redwall and Mattimeo, Mariel of Redwall and The Bellmaker) act as direct sequels featuring most of the same characters. Most others do share a few characters, albeit many seasons apart.

Typical stories consist of some villainous horde laying siege to the abbey, while/or some of its inhabitants have to venture somewhere else. Either way, several exciting medieval-style battles ensue until the book's villains are defeated. Despite the lack of an ongoing story, continuity lovers will find much to admire in the consistency of the world surrounding Redwall; each book's inside cover features a map of the territory the story covers, and they all fit together very well (although things may change slightly over the years). Other societies, like the badger lords and hare soldiers of the mountain fortress Salamandastron, or the wandering Guosim shrews, pop up frequently and have a real sense of history to them. As well, some of the most exciting times for fans came with the publications of the books Martin the Warrior and Lord Brocktree, as the eponymous characters are mentioned numerous times in other books as legendary warriors from the past, meaning that with the titles alone Jacques was announcing that we would finally be seeing the real story behind those legends.

The books, by order of publication, are:

  1. Redwall (1986)
  2. Mossflower (1988)
  3. Mattimeo (1989)
  4. Mariel of Redwall (1991)
  5. Salamandastron (1992)
  6. Martin the Warrior (1993)
  7. The Bellmaker (1994)
  8. Outcast of Redwall (1995)
  9. The Pearls of Lutra (1996)
  10. The Long Patrol (1997)
  11. Marlfox (1998)
  12. The Legend of Luke (1999)
  13. Lord Brocktree (2000)
  14. The Taggerung (2001)
  15. Triss (2002)
  16. Loamhedge (2003)
  17. Rakkety Tam (2004)
  18. High Rhulain (2005)
  19. Eulalia! (2007)
  20. Doomwyte (2008)
  21. The Sable Quean (2010)
  22. The Rogue Crew (2011)

Jacques died of a heart attack on 5 February 2011, leaving his 22nd novel, The Rogue Crew, finished but unpublished; the book was later released on May 3rd, 2011.

Redwall, an Animated Adaptation made by the Canadian company Nelvana, featured 36 episodes over three seasons - the first based on the original book, the second on Mattimeo and the third on Martin the Warrior. It was played on PBS Kids (really) by way of American Public Television in the United States and Teletoon in Canada. The show's respect for its source material, its strong writing, and unforgettable characters have garnered it great praise, and it is widely considered among Nelvana and Teletoon's all-time best shows, as well as one of the true icons of Canadian animation. You can see it in its entirety on Nelvana's Treehouse Direct channel on YouTube.

An Adventure Game video game series based on the books, The Lost Legends of Redwall is currently in the works. In the first game, The Scout, you play as one of two mice from a village called Lilygrove, not far from Redwall Abbey: while training to become members of a group that protect the village, Lilygrove is suddenly attacked by a band of pirates led by the wearat Scumsnout. It was originally an episodic series, with three Acts released from 2018 to 2021, but a Compilation Rerelease will be distributed in 2024. The second game, Escape the Gloomer, is a text-based game set during the events of Mossflower that released in 2018. A third entry in the series, Feasts & Friends, will be released in 2024.

An animated film adaptation of the first book as well as an animated series based on the character of Martin the Warrior was greenlit by Netflix with Patrick McHale as the main writer.

Has a character page in progress.

Not to be confused with Red Cliff.


This series provides examples of:

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    Tropes A-D 

  • #1 Dime: Redwall Abbey doesn't have many treasures besides Martin's gear (the shield, scabbard, armor, and especially the sword). That said, its ever growing tapestry, which chronicles historic events before and after the abbey's foundation, is most definitely this. A priceless artifact, the residents sometimes drop everything if a villain threatens to damage it. Several vermin actually exploit this to get the jump on them. In Redwall, Cluny held on a piece of it for a while before Basil and Jess took it back. In Mattimeo, Ironbeak's army pretended to tear it up to lure the residents into a trap. In Marlfox, the main plot involves the heroes journeying across the country to retrieve the tapestry after the titular villains steal it from under them.
  • The Abridged Series: A YouTube user named Hethrin created an abridged series based on the Redwall TV series, which often parodies the many changes that were made in the show, as well as some tropes that appear in the books.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: When Martin is testing his freshly-reforged sword in Mossflower, the blade cleanly cuts the tip off Boar the Fighter's anvil. It remains just as sharp throughout the series.
  • Abusive Parents: Nimbalo the Slayer's father, whose violent attitude drove his mother away. He then repeatedly beat Nimbalo and treated him extremely poorly until Nimbalo finally had enough one day and ran out. Laser-Guided Karma catches up with him though, but Nimbalo still cries over his body.
  • Accidental Murder:
    • In Redwall, Chickenhound only intended to knock out Methuselah while trying to pilfer the abbey, but the attack was so hard, it instantly kills him. The attack was much more intentional in the TV series, but Methuselah barely survives, only to succumb to his injuries a couple of episodes after.
    • In Mossflower, Blacktooth and Splitnose start fighting each other over the food they stole from Martin, Gonff and Dinny. Everything was going fine until Splitnose decided to use his spear...
    • In The Bellmaker Captain Slipp accidentally kills Ma Mellus when she leaps at him-right onto the knife he holds.
    • In Salamandastron, Dingeye and Thura start playing with archery equipment inside the Abbey and aim a bow and arrow at the stairs. Cue Brother Hal.
    • A karmic example happens in Outcast of Redwall. Just when the Wraith is about to assassinate Lord Sunflash after climbing up to an open window, Porty throws two rockcreams at Folrig and Ruddle (who were hiding behind Sunflash at the time). The badger and two otters duck, and the rocks end up hitting Wraith, causing him to fall to his death—and also to stab himself in the jaw with his blade, coated in a deadly poison.
    • Yet another karmic example pops up in Doomwyte. Just when the raven Tarul was about to kidnap a mousebabe, Sister Violet came into the belltower to help the mousebabe ring the bells. She ends up ringing them and crushing the bird in-between them both.
    • And yet another karmic accidental murder happens in Eulalia! After Orkwil, Maudie, and Rangval free themselves from Saltear, Undril, and Ruglat, Ruglat tries to run away with his spear in paw. Orkwil accidentally trips the weasel, and he falls on his spearpoint.
    • In The Sable Quean, Brother Tollum swings into the attic windows of the abbey, but a shocked Globby ends up stabbing him with a kitchen knife. Simultaneously, Brother Tollum's paws smash into Globby's chest, mortally wounding him as well.
    • Towards the end of The Rogue Crew, Uggo kills Badtooth by mistake when he and Razzid Wearat plunge through Redwall's kitchen window.
  • Action Girl: Quite a few, starting with Jess Squirrel and Constance in the first book. Mariel is probably the best known and most popular of them among the fandom. Any female member of the Long Patrol fit the bill, notably Hon Rosie. Lady Cregga Rose Eyes also qualifies.
  • A Dog Named "Perro": Brian Jacques often used words from other languages to name his characters, namely Latin. For instance, Mellus and Melesme's names are derived from melus, the Latin word for "badger", while Lutra is the Latin word for "otter". He also (possibly mistakenly) said that Plumpen's name was the Dutch word for "dormouse".
  • Adorable Evil Minions: If you like rats and mustelids, they can induce a bad case of misplaced squeeing.
  • Aerith and Bob: Martin and Gonff, for example. This is more common in the earlier books when a large number of the characters still had human-ish names.
  • A Father to His Men:
    • Captain Plugg Firetail is a villain in the series who doesn't treat his troops entirely like crap, and his troops are the only ones who don't try to seize power, going into Heroic BSoD when he dies (seeing Plugg being taken by a trio of adders may have had something to do with the latter).
    • Bane from Mossflower is an earlier example of this trope. He seemed content to share plunder with his troops, and they all seemed to respect him, while having nothing but contempt for Tsarmina, who did treat her troops like crap. Unfortunately, none of this helped his character survive the book.
    • Tramun Clogg is probably the nicest vermin leader in the series who still manages to remain a villain.
    • On the non-villainous side, badger lords are often this, although some remain more aloof. The officers of the Long Patrol almost always fit this trope.
  • Affirmative Action Girl: Triss, after fans asked why there had never been a female bearer of Martin's Sword. Sadly, it backfired a tad (probably because they thought Triss was a Mary Sue). Mariel might also count, but she didn't bear the sword and is far more popular.
  • Agony of the Feet: Axtel Sturnclaw gets stabbed in the footpaw with a spear, the head of which then breaks off and gets stuck. To make things worse, he accidentally bangs his footpaw against a stone, gouging his paw even worse and causing him to pass out. And when he wakes back up, he removes it by bashing the spearhead against a stone and pulling it out by paw.
  • Alas, Poor Villain:
    • Ublaz. He spent the last moments of his life freaking out and having a Villainous Breakdown as he was forced to watch his glorious empire slowly fall apart in the course of about a day. It's hard not to at least pity the creature when he realizes that everything he's worked so hard to achieve is crashing down around him.
    Ublaz: "Nobeast was mightier than me...Emperor...I was...Emp..."
  • All Monks Know Kung-Fu: For a supposedly peaceful bunch, the Redwallers are pretty handy when it comes to war. The cartoon takes this to ridiculous degrees in the first season, as there are soldiers seen carrying spears. In the original book, however, the abbey residents just barely get the hang of combat training.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: "Vermin" — the catch-all term for rats, stoats, and other carnivorous mammals (other than badgers, otters, or shrews) — are universally criminals. It borders on Fantastic Racism at times:
    • Only about three named vermin characters have ever pulled a Heel–Face Turn, and two of those didn't last long.
    • Averted in Marlfox, which concludes with the rat army, who had hated their lot in life, joyfully tossing out their arms and armor and learning to live as farmers.
    • Somewhat subverted in The Sable Quean. The Quean and one of her Mooks are plotting revenge on The Starscream, Zwilt the Shade. He tried to kill the Quean and sent the Mook's mate to his death. As they talk about their plans, we hear, for the first time, a vermin say the words, "I loved him."
    • It should be noted that the degree of evilness exhibited by vermin varies between books, and even in the same book, there is often a distinction between punch clock vermin, serving primarily as comedic relief, like Flinky and most of his gang in Loamhedge or Lousewort and Sneezewort in Long Patrol; and genuine, murdering villains. Quite a few of the former successfully pull Screw This, I'm Outta Here, and many of those are implied to give up banditry and such for good.
    • In the animated adaptation, and in the first book, there were rats and other vermin who were peaceably living in the area, but Cluny ordered them press-ganged into fighting. Given Cluny's orders: "Smash their dens so they don't have homes to worry about! Kill all who resist!", those that didn't fall in line were probably killed.
    • Averted in the very first novel, where the protagonist encounters a wildcat who conscientiously avoids eating meat, and, bar a few personality quirks, is quite happy to help the heroes. Additionally, his ancestor and namesake was a goodbeast pretty much from the start, as was his mate. Judging by the few examples given, cats are some of the only animals with a real chance of becoming either good or bad, which makes sense considering there are both good and bad Animal Stereotypes for them. It's just that the evil ones tend to be Big Bad.
    • In "Outcast of Redwall", we also have the episodic character of gentle Bluefen.
    • Blaggut is about the only vermin (in his case a searat) who is part of a villainous group yet isn't portrayed as a villain from the very get-go. He seems to be a good sort who just goes along with his evil captain out of fear, and deeply prefers life with the abbey-dwellers. It eventually leads him to kill his captain when the latter steals from them, kills one of them (by accident), and finally pushes him too far.
  • Always Lawful Good: Just as the vermin are always bad, the woodlanders are always good. Later books subvert this trope, but not before Taggerung took this trope to the ridiculous extreme:
    • People say that Tagg could just have been a very rebellious teen with a bad case of Values Dissonance. After all, what's the most horrifying thing one can do when one's authority figures are evil? And that the same book featured a not-so-nice woodlander in the form of Nimbalo's father.
    • Eulalia has a vole that might have readers cheering when he dies. He threatens to shoot one of the main characters when he's first introduced, then, after the Redwallers take him in and help him after he's nearly killed, decides to steal Martin's sword in exchange for the character he threatened to shoot stealing his dagger. He also kills a Sister when she tries to stop him, though he's killed later on and the sword is stolen by an actual vermin, who manages to get to the end of the book before dying.
      • Voles in general are perhaps the closest thing the series has to a "neutral" species—they aren't evil the way vermin are, but there are multiple times where they are depicted as selfish opportunists who cannot be trusted and are willing to screw over fellow woodlanders. Druwp from Martin the Warrior is another example. Captured by slavers, he sells out his fellow slaves by spying on their escape plans just to save his own skin.
    • Doomwyte has a Log-a-Log named Tugga Bruster. Unlike the other Log-a-Logs in the series, who were all good chieftains and relatively badass in one form or another, Tugga was brutal (even killing the chieftain of a vermin gang when he was begging for mercy), harsh to his crew and a total prick to the Redwallers. At first, it's easy to assume he was acting tough as a leader should, but it's made clear that he's a genuine jerk, a coward and a thief.
    • Subverted in The Sable Quean: there's a hedgehog who kidnaps a group of children pretending to rescue them but instead plans to keep them as slaves on his island, although he may not count since he's insane and thus not evil of his own free will.
    • Martin the Warrior has a tribe of pygmy shrews who are slavers, a tribe of squirrels who make a game of hunting and killing strangers and a hedgehog who is known to poison trespassers. None of them face any real consequences for their actions, however.
    • In short, by the end of almost two dozens of books, there are exactly three woodlander species that never had one of their members portrayed downright negatively: mice, otters and badgers. If we count characters like Rawnblade and Folgrim, that are, by any reasonable standards, bloodthirsty psychopaths that pass as good guys by virtue of targeting villains and having some Pet the Dog moments, then only mice remain, and, in their backstory, one mouse character had an abusive parent.
  • Ambiguously Christian: The Mossflower woodland creatures live as a religious-type order (an abbey with an abbot/abbess, various characters referred to as brother/sister, a church named after a saint, etc). However, a supreme being is never even mentioned, let alone any sort of denomination, and though there is an afterlife mentioned, little detail has been given on it. The first book mentions Satan and Hell, but no mention of them is made again.
  • Ancestor Veneration: Downplayed in that it stops short of outright worship, badger lords often see their ancestors in visions or when at death's door, asking for advice and getting cryptic results in return. The secret forge in Salamandastron contains carvings of past badger lords, of heroes and their great deeds (some of which have yet to happen), which can be added to when a badger is working in a fugue state.
  • And I Must Scream: Ungatt Trunn is assumed to be dead by the heroes and left on the seashore with a broken back. He's not dead. And the tide is coming in very, very slowly... and then, to make it all worse, a Woobie ex-mook, whose family Ungatt killed years ago, shows up to speed on his fate.
  • Angsty Surviving Twin: Happens twice. The first time it occurs in Marlfox, when Elachim is killed during the Marlfoxes' first attack on Redwall; his twin brother Borrakul lives to the end of the story. In Rakkety Tam, Dauncey is abruptly killed by Gulo's archers, but his twin sister Kersey lives to the end too, and even has a son she names after her late brother.
  • Animal Religion: Subverted. Despite the titular Redwall being an abbey, having an abbot/abbess and various characters referred to as Brother/Sister, there is no real religion to speak of (no one is referred to as a monk/nun, prayer is a generic grace at mealtimes). The only form of supernatural is the spirit of Martin the Warrior, who appears once a book to aid the protagonists, and Dark Forest, which some characters see when near death, and the ghosts of their ancestors. Even the first book, which featured a church of Saint Ninian, had no one to pray to (although the villain does have a nightmare of the Devil, who got referenced as well). There are often references to the afterlife though, such as "Dark Forest" (a neutral land of eternal slumber) and "Hellgates". Curiously, bad guys are referred to as going to either when they die. Sunflash even briefly witnesses the Dark Forest in Outcast of Redwall, though he is barred from entering until his quest is complete. In The Taggerung Vulpuz is mentioned, who's said to be the lord of Hellgates and the foxes' supposed creator (his name is close to Latin "vulpus" for "fox"). He seems to be a deity, though there's no sign of foxes or anyone having an organized religion based on him.
  • Animal Stereotypes: Each species in general has some level of common trait throughout the series. A few members of that species tend to break the norm. That said, other species are leagues different in the books than Real Life.
    • Foxes are almost always seen as cunning at best, and treacherous at worst. No matter who they help, they always look out for themselves. Hell, the Marlfox family have no problem killing each other if it means reaping the glory for themselves.
    • Weirdly, it's averted with the owls; they're almost invariably goodnatured but absent-minded, and almost never "wise", as folklore would have it. Possibly Truth In Literature, as owls aren't terribly smart in real life. Also, the bats are fairly cute and harmless with a silly Verbal Tic (verbal tic, verbal tic...), as opposed to the usual portrayals of them as evil in fiction. Though Boldred, Udara Groundslay and Captain Snow plays it rather straight, as Boldred is very wise, while Captain Snow and Udara are both are sharp minded and ruthless hunters.
    • Also unusual, rabbits are not at all flirtatious, mischievous, or clever. The hares take that role, and the rabbits are universally prissy little weaklings who never factor heavily into the plot.
  • Animated Adaptation: Nelvana produced an animated series, which adapted the books Redwall, Mattimeo, and Martin the Warrior. There were rumors of Mossflower being adapted, but was ultimately cancelled.
  • Annoying Arrows: Both averted and played straight; Mooks will fall to arrows easily, but major characters can pull them out with their teeth and keep fighting so long as the plot requires it. Averted with the deaths of Warbeak and Skarlath, though the latter was killed with a poisoned arrow.
    • Justified, though, because most of the woodlanders are stated to be excellent marksmen for various reasons, whereas average marauding rats and other bandits are not. The original book even states outright that rats are very incompetent when it comes to the making and firing of arrows, though searats are shown to be better marksmen than the average vermin.
    • Subverted in The Taggerung: when Deyna takes an arrow to the chest from Vallug Bowbeast, he keeps running, kills Vallug, then chases after and kills Eefera. However, Deyna is in excellent physical condition and was likely running on adrenaline the whole time. After he kills Eefera, Deyna suffers a Post-Victory Collapse, and it's stated that the arrow in his chest will almost cripple him and is too deep to be removed except by the very skilled "otterfixer" Rukky Garge.
  • Antagonist Title: Marlfox, Doomwyte, and The Sable Quean.
  • Anthropomorphic Shift: Overall, the characters in Redwall are far more like actual animals at the beginning of the series than they are in the most recent novels. Even the cover art reflects this, as some of the earlier books show the characters as far less anthropomorphic than some of the later ones. Some artworks even go as far as to show them as humans with rodent heads and tails.
  • Anti-Climax:
    • You would think Mattimeo would end between a big showdown with Slagar and Matthias—or even Mattimeo himself. Instead, Slagar runs and falls down a hole. And dies.
    • ZigZagged in Mariel of Redwall. At first it looks like Rawnblade and Gabool are about to get into a massive swordfight...but then Rawnblade disarms Gabool with little effort. Then, after a small chase, Gabool challenges Rawnblade to a fight using nothing but their paws, only for Rawnblade to fall into Skrabblag's chamber. Just when you think the fight will end with Mariel and her friends taking on Gabool themselves, Rawnblade grabs the scorpion and throws it out the hole onto Gabool, where it promptly stings him in the head and kills him. And then Dandin chops the scorpion in half with ease.
    • At the end of Taggerung, Deyna, Skipper, and several otters are seconds away from fighting the entire Juskabor tribe, and shit is about to hit the fan. What happens next? Nothing. Lord Russano pops up out of nowhere (with at least one thousand hares backing him up) and confronts Ruggan Bor. The fox surrenders in a short amount of time, and Russano and his hares force the Juska tribe to crawl away from Redwall. A few pages later the book ends.
    • If you're expecting the fight against Princess Kurda and Triss to be amazing, you're gonna be disappointed (much like Triss, in fact). And if you're expecting the fight against King Agarnu and Triss (and the ending to Triss entirely) to be amazing, you're gonna be very disappointed.
    • Zwilt the Shade goes down after his much-hyped swordfight with Buck goes sour, so he takes a baby hostage and is suddenly stabbed in the back by the wife of one of his victims with Martin's sword.
  • Anti-Hero: Jukka the Sling and her tribe from Lord Brocktree. Even though they help the protagonists, they were mostly just there so they could steal more weapons from their enemies.
  • Anyone Can Die: The Good Guys Always Win, but some of them don't live long enough to celebrate. Heck, even a major character or two can get killed before the end. He or she can be greatly loved by the other characters and/or readers, with makes their demise especially heartbreaking.
    • The deaths of Rose, Skarlath, Rockjaw Grang and Methuselah prove that point.
    • This trope is downplayed after Lord Brocktree. Compared to older Redwall books, the number of deaths on the good guys' side went down significantly, and it was mostly minor characters who were starting to develop that bit the dust, culminating in Rakkety Tam, which had practically no good characters die.
  • Apron Matron: In most of the books, Badger Mothers of Redwall act as caretaker of Dibbuns. Their bulk and stern behavior is what keeps the Dibbuns in line.
  • Archnemesis Dad: This crops up a hell of a lot, usually with the young sons of vermin warlords. Firstly, Swartt Sixclaw, Veil's father. He completely neglects him, doesn't even name him, and abandons him in a ditch during a battle. That's not counting what Swartt does to him the next time they meet. There's also Ferahgo and Klitch in Salamandastron and Riggu Felis and Pitru in High Rhulain. The most prominent female example is Verdauga and Tsarmina, the first time in the series when this trope actually results in the child murdering their father. Also touches of it with Agarnu and Kurda in Triss, but it's nowhere near as significant. And then Gulo murdered his father Dramz prior to the events of Rakkety Tam before chasing his brother Askor to claim the throne of the northlands.
  • Armour Is Useless: Armour, mostly mail, is occasionally useful, but its weight, hotness, and restrictiveness is shown either realistically or overplayed. Mostly armour is just rare or absent. Unless it's Plot Armour.
  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Arrows on Fire: The fire-swingers in Mariel of Redwall. The traditional kind are aplenty as well. Greypatch burned a ship with flaming arrows in the same book.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A hare beats the snot out of an enemy both for killing the hare's friends and for calling him a rabbit.
  • Artifact of Death:
    • The Tears of All Oceans in The Pearls of Luthra is this, which brings cursed fortune to those who seek it. The side protagonists of Redwall stumble across one and sought to collect the rest, treating it as a treasure hunt. Unfortunately, one of the children is killed, prompting her friend to toss them into the ocean after finishing the search.
    • The Sword of Martin could fall into this category since it's fine with the good guys but any vermin who tries to mess with it tends to die very quickly.
  • Artistic License – Geography: The Isle of Sampetra is shown on the Redwall Map to be somewhere North(?) West of Holt Lutra, which is itself way north of Redwall Abbey. And yet it's said to be tropical.
  • Artistic License – Military: While the Long Patrol take cues from RAF pilots and use almost exclusively British military ranks, High Rhulain has a hare with the rank of Master Sergeant, which is primarily used by the US army and is absent from Britain.
  • Asmodeus: A large adder snake named Asmodeus is the secondary antagonist of the first book. Not only is he a widely feared predator, it's implied he may have Serial Killer tendencies.
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Special mention goes to Slagar, who kills Vitch for seemingly no reason at all other than to just be the biggest dick in all of Mossflower
    • It's really hard to hate Magger after he kills that Jerkass watervole in Eulalia! Even though he wound up stealing Martin's sword afterwards.
    • When the Juskazann clan raids Nimbalo's old home, Dagrab slays Nimbalo's father, presumably because she felt like it. Considering how hateful and abusive he was, no one except Nimbalo missed him.
    • Baliss devouring Jeg in Doomwyte, mostly because he just wanted food. That's one less annoying Overlord Jr. Mossflower needs to worry about.
    • Veil killing Brool and Renn. Considering they were both bandits who probably spent most of their lives robbing food from woodlanders before killing them, Veil did Mossflower a favor getting rid of them.
  • Author Avatar: Word of God is that Jacques based Gonff the Mousethief on his younger self.
  • Authority Grants Asskicking:
    • Relatively speaking, the strongest fighter in the vermin gangs are almost always the leader.
    • The Badger Lords. You do not screw with them. This Lord Brocktree quote pretty much sums it up, when settling a shrew "debate":
      Lord Brocktree: "Let me explain the rules. One Badger Lord carries two hundred votes and his sword carries another hundred. Agreed?"
  • Author Vocabulary Calendar: Occasionally, it gets really apparent that Jacques loved to have his characters "salute smartly", preferably with a weapon in their paw. Latter books in the series favored "Chunnering" to a very high degree, to the point that finding a chapter without it was almost startling.
  • Avenging the Villain:
    • Saltar attempts to avenge his brother Bludrigg by fighting Gabool.
    • In Rakkety Tam, Freeta wanted both to conquer Redwall and to get revenge on Gulo the Savage on behalf of her mate, Shard.
    • In The Sable Quean, a weasel Mook teams up with Quean Vilaya to avenge her mate, who Zwilt the Shade knowingly sent to his death.
  • Axe-Crazy:
    • Many Big Bads, but especially Gabool and Gulo.
    • The majority of badgers are prone to the Bloodwrath. It's a good idea to move if you see the red mist.
    • Sparras as well. The fact that they have "KILLEE KILLEE" as a catchphrase should be a pretty big clue.
  • Baby Talk: The Dibbuns. One example is Rollo, who in the cartoon often babbles and repeats other dialogues of characters.
  • Babies Ever After: Most of the books' epilogues have the new Abbey Recorder telling about what has happened in the seasons since the books' events, with marriages and babies a common staple.
  • Backstab Backfire: Almost constantly. Perhaps the best example was Cheesethief, planning to usurp Cluny's position as leader of the horde. He actually went so far as to try on Cluny's armor, and got mistaken for Cluny himself by Constance and ended up impaled with a giant crossbow bolt.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: The hares' favored battle tactic when outnumbered. Of course, it's more back to back to back to back...
  • Badass Adorable: From a human point of view, most of the major cast members. For example, Matthias is a complete and utter dork who got beaten up by Warbeak for a brief moment yet is able to kill Cluny the Scourge with a bell.
  • Badass Boast:
    • Romsca gets the most significant one in the Pearls of Lutra. Hares, badgers, and eagles often get their own every now and again.
    • Boasting is one of the challenges set by King Bucko Bigbones that all challengers to his throne must face. (Others are Feasting and Fighting.) Dotti wins this one by being almost a Deadpan Snarker, but more cheerful.
  • Badass Longcoat: Ruggan Bor of Taggerung wears one.
  • Bad Boss: All vermin leaders. Badrang is noted by his own horde as being bad tempered.
    • Captain Plugg Firetail of the Freebooters is one of the very few exceptions, being A Father to His Men.
    • Other exception: Cap'n Tramun Clogg. His former crew agrees that he was good to them; it's just that he erred too much, so switching to Badrang's side at that point was the only way for them to stay alive.
    • Gulo the Savage. His response when one of his soldiers complains about his injuries? Kill the guy and eat him. Later, when his forces are reduced to eight vermin including himself, he still kills the one who thought about running.
    • Conspiring against Swartt Sixclaw? He may just force you to feed a whole dead bird to another lackey, bones and all, and when said lackey chokes to death, you're then executed for murder.
    • Razzid Wearet doesn't think twice about killing a minion and tossing him into the river, for no other reason than for the blood to attract big carnivorous fish which he then harpoons for his lunch.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Briefly in Redwall. After Cluny and his horde break into the Abbey by forcing Plumpen to open the gates, he and his crew start terrorizing the place. Don't worry, Matthias kills him.
  • Barbarian Tribe: The Painted Ones, the Flitchaye, the Darat, and the Sparra (though they get better after King Bull is killed and Warbeak takes over.) The Gawtrybe might also fall into this category; although they're more articulate than the others on the list, they're basically a tribe of sociopathic children.
  • Battering Ram: Cluny uses one in his second siege of Redwall Abbey. However, the defenders manage to drive off its crew and capture it.
  • Battle Cry:
    • Eulaliaaaa!
    • Blood and vinegaaaaaar!
    • And, for the abbey-dwellers, Redwaaaaaaaallllll
    • For the Highlanders and Borderers, Haway the braaaaw!
    • And for those Guosim types, Logalogalogalogalogalog!
    • This is apparently a requirement if you're in a combat situation. Even Inbar Trueflight from Pearls Of Lutra (who is from an isolated community of otters living in a hidden fertile basin and has never fought a day in his life) — he screams "RUDDARIIIIIIING!" before taking down several corsairs with his arrows.
  • Berserk Button:
  • The Berserker:
    • Most Badger Lords and anybody else who suffers from the Bloodwrath (one notable, non-badger example is Axtel Sturnclaw the mole in The Sable Quean).
    • Muta and Rab fall into this in Bellmaker, though they eventually snap out of it.
    • Don't forget Ranguvar Foeseeker, who wants to kill basically everything she doesn't like.
    • Gulo the Savage, who's above the size and weight of a badger, but with sharper claws and teeth. When the heroes lead him through a crow-infested grove, he actually loses interest in pursuing them to continue the slaughter.
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: Happens in Marlfox with the rat Janglur captured, who threw himself into a river and drowned because he knew he'd break during Janglur and Log a Log's interrogation. It's implied he was less scared of suicide than what the Marlfoxes would do to him for betrayal.
  • Beware My Stinger Tail:
    • Cluny, in a way that borders on Organ Autonomy.
    • Skrabblag the scorpion, naturally.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
    • Almost every peaceful Abbey-dweller can be provoked into extreme violence. With hares, it's a defining trait. In Mariel of Redwall, Redwallers have to be reminded that the smiling, well-spoken, joke-cracking Long Patrol squad are "perilous"; and the Long Patrol proves it by going to their deaths smiling and chatting whilst the three of them (plus a vengeful squirrel) kill thirty or forty sea-rats; Hon Rosie survives, and so that's practically annihilating a force when outnumbered ten to one and joking about it. Zwilt the Shade finds this out the hard way in The Sable Quean.
    • Baby Dumble is a baby dormouse, yet he still is able to kill crows with a few sticks.
    • The first solution to end Cluny's siege? Take a ballista and snipe him from the abbey's wall. Unfortunately, Cluny used the opportunity to dispose of his traitorous second-in-command.
  • BFS: The weapons of Badger Lords (who, being the biggest creatures around, wield weapons too heavy for other animals to lift).
  • Big Bad: In order: Cluny the Scourge, Tsarmina, Slagar the Cruel, Gabool the Wild, Ferahgo the Assassin, Badrang the Tyrant, Urgan Nagru, Swartt Sixclaw, Ublaz Mad Eyes, Damug Warfang, Mokkan, Vilu Daskar, Ungatt Trunn, Gruven, Princess Kurda, Raga Bol, Gulo the Savage, Riggu Fellis, Vizka Longtooth, Korvus Skurr, Zwilt the Shade, and Razzid Wearet.
    • In Redwall, Cluny the Scourge and Asmodeus Poisonteeth each were primary antagonists in their own right. Cluny tries to take over Redwall, while Asmodeus has hold of Martin's sword.
    • Verdauga Greeneyes initially appears to be the main antagonist of Mossflower, though admittedly he would rather come to a mutual agreement between the woodlanders rather than actually oppress them, and is willing to eventually let Martin leave Kotir after he is caught trespassing. His daughter Tsarmina, in contrast, initially appears to be a Hate Sink to make him seem better in comparison, until she poisons him and takes over Kotir herself, thus cementing her as the true villainess of the novel. Captain Ripfang is the main antagonist of Boar the Fighter's character arc, though Ripfang still pales in comparison.
    • The three books of Mattimeo are each named after a corresponding main villain - Slagar the Cruel, General Ironbeak, and Malkariss.
    • In Mariel of Redwall, Gabool the Wild is directly responsible for almost everything that happens, which includes his former second-in-command Greypatch leaving Terramort and trying to eventually conquer Redwall.
    • Salamandastron features Ferahgo the Assassin the most, though the conflict extends to beyond the fight in Salamandastron with no BigBads for the other subplots. Ferahgo's son, Klitch, also collaborates with Ferahgo in the invasion of Salamandastron, with Teeth-Clenched Teamwork adding nuance to the story.
    • Martin the Warrior cements Badrang the Tyrant as the Big Bad, though a good majority of the book is a civil war between him and Captain Tramun Clogg.
    • The Bellmaker has Urgan Nagru, the Foxwolf. He fights with his wife, Silvamord, which causes problems later down the line.
    • Outcast of Redwall has Swartt Sixclaw chasing Sunflash the Mace throughout the entirety of Mossflower. It's also heavily implied that Swartt's son, Veil the Outcast, goes through a Self v. Self conflict in which he is his own worst enemy.
    • The conflicts in Pearls of Lutra are directly caused by Emperor Ublaz Mad Eyes, whose avarice and hubris cause many of his subordinates and associates to try turning against him.
    • The Long Patrol has the entire Rapscallion Army, led by Damug Warfang.
    • Mokkan proclaims himself the Leader of the group known as Marlfox, which sticks well enough for his position to be solidifed as such when recapped in various series bibles.
    • Legend of Luke does not have a Big Bad in Book 1 or Book 3. Book 2's main antagonist is Vilu Daskar.
    • Lord Brocktree features Ungatt Trunn and King Bucko Bigbones, though the latter joins the side of good and lends his aid in stopping the former.
    • This is Played With in Taggerung, to an extreme that no other book can rival. Initially, the narrative leads one to believe Sawney Rath is the main villain up until he is killed off right at the beginning of Book 2. Then, Gruven Zann and his mother, Antigra, try leading the Juskarath clan to both stopping Tagg and making the Juskarath reign supreme throughout Mossflower. Gruven's group eventually is a three-way Big Bad Duumvirate between himself, Vallug Bowbeast, and Eefera (though the latter were given secret instructions to kill Gruven should he chicken out). Antigra eventually gets murdered by the Juskabor tribe's leader, Ruggan Bor, though he is another decoy antagonist for Book 3.
    • In Triss, King Agarnu sends his daughter, Princess Kurda, alongside her brother, Prince Bladd, and a pirate by the name of Plugg Firetail. This forms a Big Bad Duumvirate that slowly begins to fall apart the moment they reach Mossflower. On top of that, there are also Zassaliss, Harsscacss, and Sesstra, three children of the fallen adder Berussca who are also in the running for the title of the book's main antagonist.
    • Loamhedge features Raga Bol and Kharanjul the Wearet as final bosses in their own right. Kharanjul is the enemy faced at the end of the journey to Loamhedge, while Raga Bol proves a far less effective villain than one is inclined to believe, not getting any closer to harassing Mossflower Country than Badredd's gang. However, Raga Bol is the main enemy of Lonna Bowstripe.
    • Rakkety Tam has Gulo the Savage emerge from the Northlands. However, Gulo does virtually no planning whatsoever, which is instead done by his fox and ermine army.
    • High Rhulain showcases another inversion - while Riggu Fellis is the named threat, it's implied that nobody in his group actually likes him (not even his wife or children) and only deals with him because of how ruthless he is. On top of that, another threat exists on Green Isle of equal malevolence, the legendary monster Slothunog.
    • Eulalia! features both Vizka Longtooth and Gruntan Kurdly, but the former winds up being more relevant.
    • The conflict of Doomwyte becomes Korvus Skurr and Baliss the Slayer fighting each other as well as trying to overpower the denizens of Mossflower. On top of this, there was also Tugga Bruster, the Log-a-log featured in Doomwyte, who caused roughly as many problems for the protagonists as Korvus and Baliss.
    • The Sable Quean intends for Quean Vilaya to be the main villain, but Zwilt the Shade proves to be more than a Dragon-in-Chief from the onset. Quean Vilaya does not ever take back Big Bad status in time, though she does prove herself to be a nasty piece of work of her own.
    • Razzid Wearat cements himself as the primary antagonist in The Rogue Crew. A secondary antagonist exists, in the form of the fox Ketral Vane, but he does not do enough to come even close to holding the Big Bad title.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: Quite a few rather incompetent vermin 'leaders' fit this trope; notably Badredd and Gruven.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Lots. The biggest one that doesn't come off as an Ass Pull occurs in Eulalia!, when Orkwil abruptly disappears, then reappears a few chapters later with hundreds of Redwall soldiers at his side so they can rescue Gorath, Rangval, Maudie, Salixa, and the Guosim.
  • Big Eater:
    • Hares. Well, pretty much every character becomes one whenever they're given the opportunity, but the hares are the most obvious
    • Veil Sixclaw ravenously devours any food put in front of him. Bella remarks, "Some creatures are always hungering after one thing or another."
  • The Big Guy: Badgers are always the hugest in any group, with the only villain ever coming close in size being a wolverine.
  • Big "NO!": Happens Once a Season in the TV series.
    • Season 1 has Cluny, shortly before he's crushed by the Joseph Bell.
    • Season 2 has Log-a-Log, right before he Takes The Spear for Matthias.
    • Season 3 has Clogg, right when he realizes his ship has been set on fire. There's also Martin at the end of an episode, when he wakes up and sees the Warden being strangled by snakes.
    • The novel Mariel of Redwall has Mariel, when she was regaining her memory and remembered Saltar and Ledder throwing her shipmates off the boat in retaliation for her resistance.
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Marlfoxes. The queen of the Marlfoxes killed her mate to take the throne, only to be manipulated and killed by her daughter in turn, who then ends up being killed by her brother, Mokkan. The other children of the queen are all equally nasty as the others.
  • Bilingual Bonus: "Gonff" sounds remarkably like the Yiddish word for Thief. Confirmed by Word of God. Also Old Norse for "victory" is ''Yulalya" pronounced (all together, boys and girls) Eulaliaaaa!
    • Additionally, 'Gulo' is the scientific name for a wolverine, and is latin for glutton.
  • Bittersweet Ending: There is little to no guarantee that all of the heroes and their allies will come back alive.
    • Martin the Warrior ends on one. The villain is defeated and Martin has gotten his father's sword back... but two of his friends are dead, including the one that would have been the love of his life. He heads south, alone and depressed, never to return.
  • Black-and-White Morality: As a whole, the series tends to strictly follow this morality mindset, with the woodlanders, Abbey dwellers, and the soldiers of Salamandastron being the good guys, and the myriad vermin that they face being the bad guys. Only on rare occasions are woodlander species (mice, otters, squirrels, hedgehogs, moles, badgers, and hares) shown committing questionable or evil actions, while the vermin species (rats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, and foxes) are almost universally vile, with very few, if any, redeemable qualities between them.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Shadow and Zwilt the Shade are described as having dead black eyes.
  • Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce:
    • Hotroot pepper. There is no Real Life British plant known as hotroot, but it seems most likely that the Mossflower variety is a type of particularly strong horseradish.
    • Watercress (a peppery river plant) or Samphire (also peppery and grows on rocks on the sea shore). Both would be the sort of things otters (River or Sea respectively) could find. Admittedly neither are quite as hot as described.
  • Blind Bats: In Mossflower, the bats of Bat Mountpit are blind, as Martin learns when they feel his face to "see" him. Rockhanger the bat claims if he tried hard enough he could probably see, but the bats gave up relying on sight in the pitch dark caves they inhabit.
  • Blood Knight:
    • Zwilt the Shade (The Sable Quean), the right-hand sable of Vilaya. He goes out of his way to find any warrior with a strong reputation and challenge them one on one; as others have noted, death always follows in Zwilt's wake. Gulo the Savage (Rakkety Tam) is this trope taken to its extreme; even when chasing his enemies with a badly-depleted horde, he will stop the chase and turn around to attack an entire grove of crows just for receiving a few scratches.
    • Gelltor from Marlfox, when compared with his siblings. Raventail from the same book.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The inhabitants of the Land of Ice and Snow from Rakkety Tam don't have a cultural taboo against cannibalism. Askor, for instance, who was apparently a much fairer and more-sympathetic character than his mad brother, Gulo the Savage, while he is dying beneath an incredibly heavy tree, tell the woodland creatures who find him to eat him before he goes bad, and dies lifting it off so that they can get at his flesh. That said, Gulo is still crazy even by their standards: he likes to eat sapient creatures alive, and his hunger is never satisfied.
  • Boats into Buildings: In The Legend of Luke, Vilu Daskar's ship is broken in half during the climactic battle. One of the halves, stuck between two rocks, becomes a new home for the battle's survivors.
  • Body Horror:
    • Slagar's deformed face is described very well. As is Riggu Felis's. And Ashleg wears a cloak over the twisted and maimed half of his body.
    • There also the three conjoined serpents of Triss. Technically they're not conjoined, but when they were young, a vermin's flail wrapped itself around them so tightly they couldn't get loose and eventually grew into it. Their presence is announced by the horrible smell of their exposed flesh and the dragging sound of the dangling ends of the flail.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Russa Nodrey's choice of weapon? A stick.
    • Verdauga Greeneyes, upon defeating any resistance in Mossflower's backstory, made a sort of peace with the defeated woodlanders, treated them reasonably well, and protected the area from other roaming bands of vermin, and didn't bother the woodlanders too much. Even his followers respected him. Too bad his daughter didn't follow his example.
    • Pretty much any vermin leader who picked peaceful options over waging war. After all, most could make a living by farming and fishing, instead of engaging in conquest.
    • Redwall's main form of defence — the very red walls it is named after. They are high enough to reduce the threat of most would-be climbers, as defenders can shove ladders, cut climbing ropes, use the height to add to the effectiveness ranged weapons from defenders, like bows, slings, and javelins, while causing issues for those of attackers, and keep the enemy out, in general.
  • Boring Return Journey: Applies to a number of the books. For instance, in The Bellmaker the characters run into a fair bit of trouble when sailing to Southsward, but there's no hint of any difficulty getting back to Redwall.
  • Born Under the Sail:
    • While there are some hedgehog tribes known to sail the rivers of Mossflower, the best inland sailors are the tribes of shrews in logboats. Out at sea, it's sea otters and searats (both are piratical, the otters attacking vermin and the rats any helpless victims).
    • The (river) otters, one of the Always Lawful Good species in the series, are all proficient sailors, led by one they call Skipper.
  • Bowdlerize: The books contain a surprising amount of violence. The animated adaptation actually downplays this trope, with only the most violent outcomes changed. Others are depicted by varied Discretion Shots.
    • In the animated adaptation, Cluny's tunnel plan is foiled by Redwallers pouring porridge down the hole. In the book, it was boiling water. This may actually be an unintentional subversion of the trope, as boiling porridge was historically used to discourage siege attackers on occasion. Boiling water leads to terrible burns, but boiling porridge clings. Cluny is not much happier with the humiliation.
      Cluny: Porridge? They defeated us with... Porridge?! HEADS WILL ROLL FOR THIS! CHEESETHIEF!! CHEESETHIEF!!!
  • Bragging Theme Tune:
    • Taggerung has Nimbalo the Slayer do this. He ends it by telling Tagg "I'm modest, too!"
    • Romsca delivers a more badass boast in Pearls of Lutra.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: More than a few Dibbuns and young creatures in the books end up being this. Most of them end up being infuriating Karma Houdinis, such as in Pearls Of Lutra when the Dibbuns lock themselves in the kitchens causing the Redwallers to have to take off the doors with coopering tools, but aren't punished at all. In Martin the Warrior, a mother picks up her spoiled son and starts spanking him because he started kicking and hitting Martin for throwing him off a cliff in order to save him from a bird that would have otherwise eaten him.
  • Brave Scot: Characters from the North are portrayed with a Scottish Funetik Aksent. It's a grim and unforgiving land, and northerners are generally hardened warriors.
  • Breather Episode: Inverted in The Legend of Luke. Part 1 and Part 3 of the novel merely consist of Martin and his crew traveling around Mossflower, encountering new friends, and dealing with small-scale Wacky Wayside Tribe vermin as they try to uncover the story regarding Martin's father. Part 2, however, is a Whole Episode Flashback that reveals the Big Bad and fully explains Luke's tragic fate when the two characters clash.
  • Breath Weapon: Jokingly lampshaded in Mariel of Redwall on the subject of Burgo's garlic breath.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • Dear god, the ending of Outcast. Bryony spends the entire book insisting that Veil is not pure evil, and then when he gives his life to save her, she goes back to the Abbey and says that everyone was right, she was wrong, and the world is better off without Veil... and then they make her the Abbess?
    • Part 3 of Loamhedge is just as bad. It gives us two broken aesops. The first is that being a Handicapped Badass is useless since you can earn the gift of walking by growing a pair of balls and overcoming your "lack of willpower". The second is that you shouldn't give a damn about two characters who venture across the country and try to cure you of your paralysis, even if their quest turns out to be pointless due to the first broken aesop and they end up sacrificing themselves for reasons that could've easily been prevented.
    • It must be nice to be a woodlander in the later books. Basically, as long as they don't intentionally kill any of the "goodbeasts", (vermin are fine, as they would have eventually "tortured, bullied, and/or murdered" some "peace loving" creature somewhere) they can do absolutely anything they want. This includes lying, cheating, and stealing. The biggest example would probably be Yoofus Lightpaw in Rakkety Tam, who steals any number of important items, but is never given more than a slap on the wrist and a good natured head-shaking, and is beloved by all the characters. Didn't this series use to be about a religious order of mice who were renowned for offering aid to anyone, even predators?
  • Burning the Ships: When Cluny the Scourge arrives in Mossflower, he press-gangs all of the local vermin into his cause and orders his rats to smash the new conscripts' houses, so that they will have nothing to return to if they desert him.
  • Calling Your Shots: At a slinging competition in High Rhulain, all the participants must declare what their targets are before slinging at a pinata-like target (the head is worth more than the legs which is worth more than the body). The heroine declares "two eyes and a head" and hits them, a never-before seen feat.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Lots. By Triss, they're doing song and dance numbers about how "'tis nice to be a villain".
  • Carnivore Confusion: See Always Chaotic Evil and Cats Are Mean.
    • Vermin armies are a mix, usually of rats mixed with foxes and weasels. But don't foxes and weasels eat rats?
    • The eating habits of the (almost) Always Chaotic Evil vermin? They're carnivores who by nature would eat mice, but in a setting like Redwall, that would be cannibalism. Mostly when they kill for meat, it's wood pigeons or sea gulls. To add to the confusion, badgers and otters are always good characters, even though they're carnivores. Badgers even eat mice in real life.
    • Most species prominently featured in the Redwallverse, including hedgehogs and squirrels, eat mice. In the real life, that is. In the books, even among the villains only a minority eat other sapient creatures.
    • The whole quasi-religious eating of fish by the good guys, often saved during seasonal feasts, just adds another level to the confusion.
      Silver fish whose life we take. Only for a meal to make.
    • Averted by Gulo the Savage (a wolverine) and his horde of ermine in Rakkety Tam, who gladly chow down on their defeated enemies. However, this is referred to as cannibalism throughout the book.
  • Carrying a Cake: In The Pearls of Lutra, Tansy and the Friar are carrying a cake they made for Abbot Durral to hide in the Gatehouse until the appropriate time. It has been decorated with seven marchpane orbs wrapped in rose petals on top, and after Clecky the Hare sneaks one, four gulls attack. It turns out that the cake decorations resemble the six Pearls of Lutra, and the gulls had been sent by Ublaz to find the pearls.
  • Cats Are Mean: Most of the cats that appear are evil, but they're also one of the few "vermin" species to have good individuals shown.
  • The Cavalry: In Martin the Warrior, the Rosehip Players and escaped slaves are ready to do a Last Stand, as Badrang's horde leaves the fortress to attack, when suddenly an entire army brought by Martin and Boldred arrives to attack Marshank.
  • Chameleon Camouflage: In Marlfox, this is the ability that marks the eponymous Marlfoxes.
  • Character Title: Triss, Mattimeo, Martin the Warrior, Lord Brocktree, Rakkety Tam, Mariel of Redwall... sheesh, it never ends!
  • Characterization Marches On:
    • In Mariel of Redwall, it was explicitly stated that Rawnblade was the first badger lord to suffer the Bloodwrath since Boar the Fighter. As of Outcast of Redwall, the Bloodwrath abruptly became something that all badgers got every time they fought.
    • At various points, it's stated that certain badgers (and sometimes other creatures) have a particularly strong version of the bloodwrath. Presumably, there are plenty of badgers out there who don't suffer from the bloodwrath (Lord Russano comes to mind) — we just don't hear about them because of Rule of Cool.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: Played straight when Vermin are the cheaters, as the goodbeasts normally win the upper hand with horrible results for their foebeasts. Generally subverted when goodbeasts are the ones cheating, like in the case of Dotti vs. Bucko Bigbones. She did not win the first contest, Bragging (spoiler-notouchingorfightingallowed-disqualificationmayfollow) by bragging best, but by concentrating on provoking her easily-angered counterpart and neutralising his brags by joking about them. She went so far (which was entirely calculated on Dotti's part) that Bucko struck her, disqualifying himself. Likewise, she wins the second contest — an eating contest — by nibbling away until Bucko succumbed to the sun, the wine, and the copious amount of food he'd eaten and passed out. She even admits that she feels bad about this.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The iron star Tiria extracted from Pandion. She carries it for the whole book before returning it to sender.
    • The Joseph Bell in the first book, which is what Matthias eventually uses to kill Cluny the Scourge.
    • Martin's sword in The Sable Quean, which surprisingly wasn't used at all in the book except to kill Zwilt the Shade.
    • Tsarmina's inability to swim and general hydrophobia. Initially it's just there to keep her on the other side of River Moss from the woodlanders, but later plays a role in her Sanity Slippage and ultimate demise.
  • Cheshire Cat Grin: Rose, Martin, Grumm, and Pallum must do this to avoid provoking the pygmy shrews.
  • The Chessmaster:
    • Cluny. Every chapter has him adapting his Evil Plan to exploit some new development or preceived weakness.
    • Swartt Sixclaw was a great master planner, as well.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: What happened to the sparrows?
    • There were only 4 left by the end of the third book (possibly 5. General Ironbeak's rooks manage to bring one down; while it's unclear whether it survived in the book, in the TV series Constance finds it outside and it is shown being tended to shortly after). Assuming there are 2 males and 2 females, they would eventually be forced to inbreed to keep the sparrows alive. Possibly, this could have caused some screwed up genes, depending on how anthropomorphic the animals are supposed to be.
    • Bagg and Runn don't appear in The Bellmaker, despite taking place only four seasons after their first appearence. Jacques never explains their disappearance.
  • Church of Saint Genericus: The Abbey has no mentioned denomination.
  • Circus of Fear: Slagar's gang. They weren't really one, but they posed as a traveling circus.
  • Clean Food, Poisoned Fork: Swartt uses this trope so he can convince Bowflegg that the wine isn't poisoned by drinking some of it straight from the bottle (the poison is smeared on the goblet which they drink from). He tries it on three separate targets, though the third would-be victim catches on, forcing him to find a different method of disposal.
  • Clock Tower: The climax of Redwall takes place in a bell tower, but it's close enough.
  • Co-Dragons: Several Big Bads have these, but most notable is Ungatt Trunn's group: Groddil, Grand Fragorl, and Ripfang.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Things that are red (the Goreleech, Veil's paws) are evil. Things that're rosy-pink (Redwall, the Arfship) are good. Generally speaking- it's not always the case but it seems like a running trend.
  • Commander Contrarian: The pygmy shrews in Martin the Warrior, to the point that you can get them to do exactly what you want by telling them the opposite: Tell Dinjer to keep hitting Martin, and he'll stop. Tell Queen Ambala to kill the prisoners, and she'll order them to be kept alive.
  • Conjoined Twins: The "three-headed dragon" in Triss is actually a set of adder triplets, bound together by a mace and chain they were unable to remove.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Wildcats get hit hard with this in High Rhulain. One wildcat villain? Some of the most dangerous foes in the series, being basically the vermin equivalent of badgers. But a whole army of them? They fall just as easy as rats or weasels. However, the book makes the point that most of the cats are "feral cats" whose ancestors were freed from an unspecified master, while Riggu Felis and his sons are the only real wildcats on the island.
  • Continuity Drift:
    • The first book of the series more or less stated that the stories take place in the "real world" - there's a full-sized church near Redwall Abbey, some vermin arrive stowed away in a horse-drawn carriage, and Big Bad Cluny the Scourge is said to come from Portugal. Three or four books down the line, the Redwall world has its own geography, and neither humans nor Portugal have anything to do with it. Then High Rhulain comes along and implies that the cats' distant ancestors were once pets.
    • Salamadastron. In Mossflower Boar the Fighter uses a metal dragon to scare away any searats/vermin, inducing the legend of the fire lizard. In all the other books Salamandastron is just a military fortress.
    • Martin's shield, sheath and belt disappear after Mattimeo.
    • Lord Brocktree is the first Badger Lord of Salamandastron in the early books, later books would Retcon this.
    • Bat Mountpit vanishes entirely from the Redwall Map.
  • Continuity Snarl: Timballisto has two unreconcilable fates given. In Outcast of Redwall he outlived Martin by a number of years and told stories of his adventures to his grandson Barlom. In Legend of Luke he apparently died the winter after the fall of Kotir, flatly contradicting his earlier fate.
  • Cool Sword:
    • The Sword of Martin the Warrior was once an ordinary blade passed down from Luke, Martin's father, to Martin himself. In Mossflower, it was worn down to the point where it was easily broken to the hilt by Tsarmina. A new blade was later to it from Thunderbolt Iron by Badger Lord Boar the Fighter in the land of Salamandastron, becoming the Iconic Item throughout the series and wielded by many heroes and allies. After Cluny the Scourge's defeat by one Matthias in Redwall it was dubbed "Ratdeath"note . However, it is only cool in terms of the material. It is still an regular sword made for battle.
    • Rawnblade's sword, "Verminfate", even though it only appeared in one book.
  • Covers Always Lie:
    • The description on the cover of the hardback version of Outcast of Redwall described Redwall coming under attack from Swartt's army and Veil being forced to choose between his home and his father. To be fair both are sort of true. There was a battle between Swartt's force and the Abbey dwellers (that lasted a few pages and was never anywhere near the Abbey) and Veil did have a moment of conflict when Bryony showed up at the cave Swartt was hiding in (and it's left unclear what he decided, if anything). Covers also repeatedly show Swartt with his sixclaw on the wrong side.
    • By far most blatant ones were made by a German cover artist. The Redwall one, for instance shows all animals nude. And further shows all Redwallers, including Constance and Basil, cowering behind in fear, while Matthias seems to be the only one brave enough to stand up against Cluny. The one for Mossflower, however, is worse. It shows nude Martin and his cronies riding the Salamandastron hares like on horses (apart from the fact that there are only two hares present). And... wait a minute... who is that third mouse?! What do you mean, it's supposed to be a shrew?! And why are the other two mice blue? Artist, are you blind? Or illiterate? Or high? Or everything at the same time? Anyway, it apparently took the publishers three of such covers, before they finally fired that cover artist. For his cover for Mattimeo, he finally managed to draw a creature with clothes on, but apparently still does not know the difference between a ''combat axe'' and a ''spike club''. Especially, when the axebearer is explicitly called Orlando the Axe! And Mattimeo was not a baby at that time anymore. And lastly, none of the scenes portrayed on these covers happened (or at least happened that way) in the books.
    • Russian cover art is a relatively mild case of this - it is well-drawn, and characters usually are recognizable, but its recurring artist really likes fancy Renaissance-style clothing and armor, and inserts them in most of his later Redwall covers, with results less than authentic to the savage world barely into the Iron Age, that the books past the original Redwall actually imply.
  • Crafted from Animals: Appears often, and used for disturbing effect considering that it takes place in a World of Funny Animals. There are a few villains in the series with clothing, armor, or weapons made from parts of animals they've allegedly killed, such as Cluny the Scourge and his cloak made from bat wings, and Urgan Nagru and his wolf pelt, with the skull intact.
  • Crapsaccharine World: Redwall and Salamandastron are basically little Sugar Bowls, but apparently everywhere else you're in imminent risk of marauding bandits, predatory birds, pirates, cannibalistic lizards...
  • Crapsack World: Only and arguably in the later books. Eventually, the world consists of Redwall, Salamandastron...and in between, a wretched hive of Always Chaotic Evil vermin ready to kill or enslave anybeast who steps outside. However, there are many villages scattered about that give sanctuary, such as Noonvale, Camp Tussock, King Araltum's settlement, or pre-plague Loamhedge, then there is the Southsward Kingdom. There are probably dozens more deep within Mossflower that exist but never mentioned.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: It probably wasn't meant to be read that way, but the evil Emperor Ublaz Mad Eyes has a weird fixation on silk robes, perfume, nail polish, and pink pearls.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Many characters, mostly hares who aren't on the Long Patrol — Basil Stag Hare, Tarquin L. Woodsorrel and most especially Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle aka. Clecky.
    • Clecky's owl companion Gerul gets a special mention as well for being described by Clecky as "a young duffer" on introduction but turning out to be an absolutely ferocious fighter, with an impressive will to live. It's noted after his fight with the jackdaw tribe that it's a miracle he's still alive.
      Gerul: Ah well, d'ye see, sir, as me ould mother used t'say, there's not a bit of use shakin' claws with the other feller. If yer goin' t'fight then best get it done with proper so's yer foe don't come back fer more.
  • Cruel Mercy
    • At the end of Pearls of Lutra, Martin decides to free Gowja and forces him to swim back to Sampetra so he can rejoin the other surviving corsairs. On the upside, Gowja and the other pirates can fish and have enough clean water and fruit on the island to survive. On the negative side, they're stranded there, seemingly forever. And they can't even build a small boat because Martin and his friends burned all the wood on the island. And there are giant monitor lizards on the island that will probably have no problem eating the corsairs. It doesn't help that the book blatantly stated that they're all probably gonna kill each other in a struggle for power...
    • Toward the end of "Mattimeo", after Ironbeak's army of corvids was defeated, the Redwallers informed the birds that their lives would be spared. However, "this does not mean we are soft". In order to incapacitate the birds from being able to continue preying on the weak, they would each be made to wear bent iron rungs that would serve as permanent yokes and limit their flight mobility and physical prowess. The birds will spend the rest of their lives being vulnerable marks at the bottom of the food chain.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Redwallers have Martin the Warrior, a figure in Redwall's history. In the books, he is depicted as a saint (appearing in visions or dreams which provide guidance, etc.) while the TV series flip-flops between depicting him as either a saint (he appears in visions as with the books) or as close to a god as he could be (the characters ask Martin for help, in and in the Season 3 premiere the Redwallers sing a song thanking him for the season's harvest). Redwall itself is a Catholic-like abbey with monks and nuns, and aside from this however there's no explicit religion, with only a vague "Dark Forest" as the afterlife. The Devil is mentioned in the first book, but religious references are made progressively less frequent. Vulpuz is mentioned in The Taggerung, who seems to be a Satan-like being (it was said he rules Hellgates and created the foxes) though it only comes up once.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Sometimes the battles are Pendulum War types. Nine times out of ten, however, the heroes will utterly stomp their way through the villains.
    • The series is famed for this on the good guys' side to the point where there are cross-fandom jokes about the ability of woodlanders to curbstomp: "How do you know when you are fighting Wood Elves? You walk under some trees, a voice 30 feet above you shouts 'fire!', and you die. How do you know when you are fighting Mossflower squirrels? You walk under some trees, die, and then a voice 30 feet above you shouts 'fire!'"
  • Cute, but Cacophonic:
    • Dotti in Lord Brocktree. Pretty haremaid, appalling singer, worse with instruments.
    • Hon Rosie, whose loud whooping laugh annoys all the other characters around her.
    • All hares in general seem prone to this.
  • Cute Is Evil: Baby Veil causes Cuteness Overload in Bryony even when he's biting her. Anyone who's owned a ferret knows this is Truth in Television.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Vermin leaders are prone to over-the-top death threats. Most notably, Clogg's announcement that he wishes to cut Badrang's head off and throw it in his face.
  • Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Romsca gets a whole Villain Song to this effect.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • According to this SPOILER LADEN Review of Doomwyte, the series went this way with the later novels.
    • Outcast of Redwall has a more mature and tragic tone than what came before it. The Big Bad, Swartt Sixclaw, is a disturbingly realistic sociopath whose only motive is to kill the book's hero for revenge, because the latter wounded him escaping enslavement. Much of the focus is on how Sunflash and Veil both had their lives ruined by Swartt's actions. Sunflash's need for revenge makes it impossible for him to have a normal life, and in the end he loses his best friend Skarlath. Veil's story is equally tragic, as he's abandoned by his father and Driven to Villainy by the prejudices of the Abbeydwellers, and Bryony's mission to bring him back ends with Veil dying in her arms after taking a hit for her.
    • If any of the later books, Rakkety Tam. The book itself isn't exactly darker or edgier (since the series already has loads of Family-Unfriendly Violence), but the Big Bad is. He and his army are all cannibalistic and (relatively) competent villains. But like every other Redwall book, the amount of Sacrificial Lions only ranges between one and five, and the book still has a rather light-hearted feeling to it.
  • David Versus Goliath: Matthias vs. the Wearet (Mattimeo), Tam vs. Gulo (Rakkety Tam); arguably Martin vs. Tsarmina (Mossflower)
  • Dead Guy Junior: Mattimeo, full name Matthias Methuselah Mortimer. Out of the three mice he was named after, only one (his father Matthias) was alive at the time of his birth.
  • Deadly Ringer: Matthias wins his David Versus Goliath battle against Cluny the Scourge by retreating up the belltower and cutting the bell off its rope. It falls directly on Cluny, crushing him with a final peal.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    • Several of the heroes, especially hares.
      Cluny: "Get him! I want his head!!"
      Basil: "What's the matter? Isn't your own head good enough?"
    • A few villains are good at this too, most notably Flinky.
    • Veil unloads on his father near the end of Outcast: "Some warlord you are. I've seen more action from a squashed frog!"
  • Death by Childbirth: Bluefen (Veil's mum). After giving birth to him, she soon dies, having been weakened by enduring a harsh winter earlier.
  • Death by Falling Over: Slagar the Cruel, Princess Kurda, Queen Vilaya,... it's amazing how many Redwall Big Bads never seem to look where they're going. Especially Tsarmina ("UGH! SLIMY, WET, COLD WATER!").
  • Death by Looking Up:
    • Cluny.
    • And to a lesser extent, that Jerkass watervole from Eulalia!
  • Death by Materialism:
    • Flogga. Sure, you should definitely trust Gabool just because he promised you treasure and completely ignore that he's spent the last several days going crazy and thinks you're Greypatch, the rat he's been trying to kill. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
    • Subverted in The Long Patrol with Friar Butty, who fell into an underground swamp due to the weight of the treasure he was carrying and was nearly devoured by toads and mudfish. Luckily, he got saved by Shad at the last minute.
    • Gruntan Kurdly gets special recognition for dying in an attempt to steal a swan's egg.
  • Death by Newbery Medal: Martin the Warrior is generally considered to be the best book of the series. It is by far the most tragic.
  • Death Glare:
    • Sister Alkanet gave such "icy glares" to anyone who discredited her, her infamous physicks, or her perceptions of how dibbuns ought to behave.
    • Some villains have something like this, almost literally in the case of Ublaz, and it is said that if you stare too long into Farran the Poisoner's eyes, you'll either die or go insane.
  • Death of a Child: While it's nowhere near as bad as Warrior Cats, the series has invoked this trope a few times. Anyone who isn't a Dibbun can die at any moment, even if they're described as being "young" in the novel.
  • Decapitated Army:
    • The rats in Marlfox do a Heel–Face Turn once the Marlfoxes and their captains are dead. As do Flinky's band in Loamhedge and the Brownrats in Eulalia!.
    • Same goes for the Monitors in Pearls of Lutra. After Martin shouts that Ublaz is dead, the lizards throw down their spears and look at each other stupidly, unsure of what to do next.
  • Deceptive Disciple: Slagar to Malkariss (Mattimeo), Klitch to Ferahgo (Salamandastron)
  • Deconstruction Fic: The fandom commonly attempts to deconstruct the Always Chaotic Evil nature of vermin. Success varies.
  • Decoy Protagonist:
    • Veil Sixclaw, in large part due to the cover, which is actually of his father.
    • Gabool is arguably a Decoy Antagonist. You would think with the book's description, he'd be going around causing as much turmoil as he could. Up until the end of Mariel of Redwall, all he does is sit on his throne going crazy and killing his own searats. The real Big Bad is Greypatch, who not only betrayed him with complete success but did what Gabool probably should've been doing in the story: trying to take over Redwall.
    • Inverted again in Taggerung. Sawney Rath is killed not even a third of the way into the story.
    • Bragoon and Saro from Loamhedge. They spend the entire novel looking for something to help Martha walk again, only to find nothing but bones. And on their journey back to Redwall, both of them sacrifice their lives, unaware that Martha had already learned to walk on her own.
  • Defector from Decadence:
    • Grubbage, who happily helps the Redwallers after being captured.
    • And to a lesser degree, Ashleg from Mossflower. After seeing how Tsarmina was beginning to lose her grip on sanity, he decided to get away from her and "find new friends under a new sun that knew how to live simply, without dreams of grandeur".
    • Blaggut from The Bellmaker ultimately decides to become a boat-builder after everything he went through at the Abbey.
    • Upon escaping from Big Bad Raga Bol, Flinky and his band seem more than content to find a nice spot to settle down and forget all notions of Abbey conquest.
  • Deliberately Cute Child: Trouble-making mouse baby Dwopple cries on cue and exaggerates his Baby Talk even more than the rest of the Dibbuns.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Even discounting all the species-related stuff, in Mossflower, small children can drink alcohol and get involved in battle, and thirteen-year-olds can marry. In real world Medieval England (similar to the world of the books) this would have been perfectly acceptable. Cider, beer and wine were drunk by young children, girls as young as 13 were often married to older men and army drummer boys or navy powder monkeys might be as young as 10. Although Word of God stated in a Q&A that Redwall drinks aren't alcoholic, he's been known to contradict himself on occasion. In any case, alcoholic drinks in the medieval era were far less intoxicating than currently, as fermentation at the time wasn't as sophisticated.
  • Denied Food as Punishment:
    • Sometimes done with hares, usually for having eaten too much food in the first place. This rarely ends well. Also seen sometimes with slaves in the series.
    • This actually nearly got a character killed in Triss. After the hare in question (who had already been in trouble twice for eating food that belonged to other people) eats a trifle that the Dibbuns were supposed to get as a prize for winning a contest, the abbot makes him clean the abbey from top to bottom, with only lettuce and water for food. The hare then loads up a haversack full to bursting with food, and leaves. He then gets caught by the villains and has to be rescued, to no one's delight.
  • Depraved Dwarf: The Flitchaye are a tribe of midget weasels who ambush travelers with drugged smoke and plant camouflage.
  • Derelict Graveyard: One appears in The Bellmaker.
  • Determinator: Shows up quite often, mostly with badgers, but most especially with Martin the Warrior at the end of Mossflower. He beats Tsarmina by simply refusing to lie down and die.
  • Devil, but No God: In the first book, the Devil is mentioned by name, along with references to Satan and "Old Harry" (an English nickname for the same), but not God. The omission is pretty odd considering that Redwall is an abbey, with monks and an abbot. They only say a generic grace at meals, with no mention of prayers. In the other books however it gets downplayed even more, with only the "Lord of Dark Forest" (the afterlife) also has been occasionally mentioned. However he also appears to be more a Grim Reaper figure than Satan. In The Taggerung Vulpuz, a being with similarity to the Devil, is also mentioned. There is also the fact that in the original "Redwall" book, the giant adder is named Asmodeus, which one in-universe character identifies as "the name of the devil himself". In real world mythology, Asmodeus is depicted as various kinds of demon king, depending on which version one reads, but is certainly a very high-ranking lord of Hell.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Lampshaded in The Pearls of Lutra, where Ublaz didn't quite realize that his Monitor lizards were a) landlubbers and b) tropical creatures. Half of them are dead before Lask Frildur and Romsca ever reach Mossflower.
  • Dies Wide Open: Used, oddly enough, in the animated series, particularly in Martin the Warrior. The corpses of both Hisk and Fleabane are both shown with dead, glazed-over eyes when the camera cuts to them,
  • Dirty Communists: In the animated series, the shrews. They even have Russian accents, complete with putting everything to a communal vote.
  • Dirty Coward: Pretty much all vermin will commit some underhanded tactic if, or when, things don't go their way. However, some Big Bads can subvert or downplay this because they are that dangerous on their own:
    • Subverted with Gulo the Savage (Rakkety Tam), who often fought from the front alongside his vermin Mooks. Of course, considering who he is, aside from a badger lord or another wolverine, there wouldn't be too many threats to his person. And the fact he grows increasingly psychotic doesn't hurt either...
    • Cluny (original Redwall), Ferahgo (Salamandastron), Vallug Bowbeast (Taggerung) plus six rebel captains and Romsca (Pearls of Lutra) were fairly badass as well.
    • Ferahgo was a highly dangerous fighter, but he was still a coward (look at his "duel" with Urthstripe for proof of that).
    • All of the Marlfoxes were not only smart, but very skilled and stealthy fighters. Gelltor in particular had the balls to take on Janglur by himself. The only coward in the entire family was Mokkan, and Lantur and High Queen Silth (although they don't fight anyone in battle).
    • And in a less known case (Triss), the Pure Ferret King Sarengo was a major subversion of this, as he attacked and killed a full grown female adder solo. Granted, he was only searching for a way to reach and plunder Redwall, and he died from his wounds (though he wouldn't have if his son hadn't deserted him) but it's still a badass feat few others aside from Matthias could replicate. It's a pity that his genes didn't pass on to his descendants...
  • Disability Superpower: Simeon from Mariel and Cregga in Taggerung are both Blind Seers. Probably inverted with Lord Asheye, who forced himself into the Bloodwrath so many times that he went blind.
  • Disappeared Dad: This is practically a rite of passage when it comes to Badger Lords. Lord Brocktree explains why:
    Brocktree: "I was restless, just like all Badger Lords before me. It grieved me to leave behind my young son. Boar the Fighter I named him. A badger's son is his pride and joy, when he is a babe. But he must grow up, and it is a fact that two male badgers cannot live in peace, especially Badger Lords, for that is what Boar will grow to be one day. So I had to observe the unwritten law. I left Brockhall and began roaming, to follow my dream." note 
    • Note that the one time we see a Badger Lord and his son living in the same place, it is indeed as dysfunctional as the series can get between an independent-minded teenager and his military-minded father. Both get better by the end of the book after Sagax proves he can be trusted to be self-disciplined.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: The "Big Bad" in Taggerung gets killed off quite early into the story, and several other vermin begin to take his role as the main villain.
  • Disney Villain Death: See Death by Falling Over. Also Ferahgo and Swartt Sixclaw. Judging by the disturbing simile provided in Outcast of Redwall, Swartt was probably dead before Sunflash tossed him off the mountain...
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • Vizka Longtooth kills Glurma for refusing to get in a muddy ditch and possibly drawing the pursuing heroes attention. However he follows it up by killing Jungo for no reason at all, just because he laughed when Vizka was feeling angry. This is specifically stated to be the last straw for his crew, who finally abandon him.
    • In Marlfox, a rat accidentally drops his shield and disturbs Queen Silth with the noise. His punishment? Feed him to a bunch of ravenous pikes.
  • Distant Sequel: Most novels are set a generation or so apart from one another, so that any given work tends to feature as main characters people who were either children in its immediate sequel or who are the offspring of the previous work's main characters. As there are twenty-two novels in the series, the end result is that the last few books in chronological order take place a good few centuries after the first ones, and extensive dynasties and family lines can be traced among the characters who are each other's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: It's called Redwall. Everyone who lives there works together, without monetary reward, for the good of the community as a whole. Everyone eats together, and most sleep in a communal dormitory. It's an abbey, which really do have this kind of communal living. On the other hand, the villains and mooks are violent, dirty, uneducated and amoral at best, working for pay and/or the rewards of battle...
  • The Dog Bites Back:
    • In Lord Brocktree, the Big Bad is finished off by the fortune-telling fox he constantly mistreated.
    • Blaggut. After his Captain Slipp kills Ma Mellus, Blaggut strangles him to death, goes back to the Abbey to apologize, and then gets to live happily ever after as a carpenter and shipwright.
  • Downer Ending: Martin the Warrior. The eponymous character's girlfriend is killed in battle and he goes into exile. This summary doesn't begin to do it justice.
  • The Dragon: Rare due to the treacherous nature of most vermin. The straightest examples would be Lask Frildur to Ublaz, and Nightshade to Swartt Sixclaw.
  • Drama Queen: Trajidia Witherspyk in Sable Quean, a member of a group of traveling performers whose overly-dramatic mannerisms annoy the rest of her family.
  • Dramatic Spine Injury: In Lord Brocktree, Brocktree ends the climactic battle by dealing the warlord Ungatt Trunn a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in front of his army, making him beg for mercy, and then snapping his spine in a Killer Bear Hug. Later, a vengeful ex-minion notices he's Only Mostly Dead, but simply rolls him into the ocean.
  • Dreadful Musician: Dotti in Lord Brocktree. As quoted from the narration: "To say her singing was akin to a squashed frog trapped beneath a hot stone would be a great insult to both frog and stone."
  • Dressing as the Enemy:
    • Midge Manycoats in The Long Patrol is the master of this, to the extent that he managed to trick an entire horde of vermin into believing that he and Tamm - both Hares (whose ears are the single most prominent identifying feature of any species in the series) - were actually a pair of vermin.
    • Mask from Mossflower, who was known as a master of disguise. In order to rescue Gingivere, Ferdy, and Coggs from the dungeons of Kotir, he disguised himself as a fox and managed to not only trick Tsarmina's seer-fox Fortunata, but also got hired as a captain in Tsarmina's army.
    • Brome and Keyla from Martin the Warrior.
    • Jukka the Sling from Lord Brocktree disguises herself as a member of Ungatt Trunn's horde by dyeing her fur and shaving her tail.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Inevitable given the high death rate in the series, but there are several examples that stand out.
    • In Pearls of Lutra, the rebellion against Ublaz was started by a guy named Barranca. Shortly after the rebellion started Rasconza stepped into the plot, stabbed Barranca and took over as rebellion leader.
    • At least half of the Big Bads. The biggest ones include Princess Kurda, who tripped and fell on her broken sabre,, Slagar, who tripped and fell down a big hole, and Gruven, who's swiftly beheaded by Ruggan Bor.
    • Malkariss is stoned to death very quickly, and King Agarnu drowned after someone pushed him into a lake.
    • Despite being a Hero Killer and semi-Big Bad, Vallug Bowbeast gets his head lopped off before he even has the chance to put up a fight.
    • Antigra, who was Put on a Bus halfway into Taggerung. Towards the end it was revealed that she was killed after trying to overthrow Ruggan Bor. Not even her son seemed to care about her death.
    • Lantur in Marlfox. Immediately after she becomes the new ruler of Castle Marl, Mokkan conveniently shows up, approaches her, and slyly pushes her into the lake, where a bunch of pikes eat her.
    • Twoggs Wiltud. She fell down some stairs and banged her head on the Redwall cellar door. Justified since she was an old hedgehog, but it's still very ludicrous and random.
  • Drunk with Power: Mokkan after he becomes the High King of Castle Marl and all the other Marlfoxes die. It got so creepy that it looked like he was having a borderline Villainous Breakdown...
  • Dual Wielding: Finbarr Galedeep's swords. Saltar in Mariel wields a sword in one paw and a hook in the other.
  • Dynamic Entry: Done in Mariel with a battering ram.

    Tropes E-I 

  • Early-Installment Weirdness: A number in the first novel, Redwall.
    • Redwall features a number of references indicating that the animals live in a world where humans also exist, such as a horse cart that can fit hundreds of rats, a church, taverns, ports, and a direct mention of Portugal. Also, one of the characters was a beaver. In later books, author Brian Jacques made it clear that only animals existed in the Redwall universe, and only animals native to the British Isles, so there were no future appearances of any more beavers (though beavers WERE native to Britain at one time, but they were killed off due to overhunting, and were not brought back until later). And when animals that aren't native to Britain do appear, like the golden hamster in one book, they speak with foreign accents to indicate that they aren't from Mossflower.
    • The animal characters also gradually became more human-like, especially badger characters. In the first book, specific note is always made when Constance rears up on her back feet; in later books, even badgers are assumed to be bipedal.
    • The order of Redwall itself started out as reminiscent of a Catholic monastic order: the members wore habits, they lived somewhat sequestered inside their Abbey, and remained celibate for the entirety of their lives. Cornflower got yelled at for flirting with Matthias, who was then a novice of the order and therefore off-limits; when they got married, Matthias was mentioned to have left the order and lived apart from the monks. In later books, all that's left of this rule is that there is an Abbey. Even Abbesses and Abbots can be married, and not even the habit is required anymore, morphing it into some sort of peaceful commune that's little different from other communities in the forest.
    • The first book Redwall had more religious/mystical references, including mentions of heaven and hell and a snake named Asmodeus, after a demon in the Catholic/Orthodox Bible. Again, these are toned down in establishing Redwall as its own universe. In the first book, it is also ambivalent whether Sela the fox actually had unique powers. Later in the series, any claims of supernatural powers are usually explicitly presented as a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax (Psychic Dreams for Everyone and seers remained, however).
    • In an early scene in the first book, claims that Cluny's horde is all evil is met with cries of "That's right, give a rat a bad name!" implying that there are rats living in Redwall. This is most certainly not the case in the future.note  The first book also implies generally that not only rats but other "vermin" are not Always Chaotic Evil, but the later books have the opposite being the case, aside from a few exceptions.
    • The Guosim (Guerilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower) are very different in Redwall from their latter depictions. They're led by a president named also Guosim and decide everything by communal vote with Log-a-Log just a respected elder. Later books begining with Mattimeo would drop this and make Log-a-Log the chieftain with the name becoming a title used by all other shrew leaders in the books.
    • The feast scenes in the first couple of books occasionally mention corn and tomatoes. In future books, only Old World produce is available.
    • In most books, hares often interject "wot" or "wot, wot" into sentences as a Verbal Tic. Hare archetype Basil doesn't do this in Redwall. The Salamandastron hares in Mossflower do it, but it's spelled "what". Once Basil picks it up in Mattimeo, "wot" has been settled on.
    • In Mossflower, Bella says that Salamandastron is ruled exclusively by male badgers, and rulership is passed from father to son. In later books, there are several female Badger Lords, and it's never mentioned whether any of the Badger Lords after Sunflash are related to each other apart from Rawnblade Widestripe.
    • The Sword of Martin is renamed "Ratdeath" at the end of the first book. This is never mentioned again.
  • Eaten Alive:
    • Any victim of Asmodeus in Redwall. Which explains how Chickenhound escaped his fate, albeit not unscathed, come Mattimeo.
    • What usually happens to the victims of large snakes or large fish. Lantur and Mokkan from Marlfox stand out the most.
    • Lampshaded in Doomwyte with Aluco, who admitted he had to "hunt" so he wouldn't starve while hiding from the Painted Ones. Whether or not he ate his prey while they were still alive isn't certain though.
  • Eating Contest:
    • In Salamandastron, Thrugg and Thrugann have a contest to see who can eat not the most, but the spiciest shrimp and hotroot soup. It's declared a draw after both are in agony, but Hollyberry then casually drains both their bowls and comments that it could use a little more spice.
    • In Lord Brocktree, Bucko Bigbones lets anyone challenge him for his crown by beating him in three challenges, one of which is feasting.
  • Eats Babies: Some of the bad guys. Cluny makes a throwaway remark about baby rabbits being "tasty little things". See Carnivore Confusion.
  • Elaborate Underground Base:
    • Salamandastron is a fortress built into an extinct volcano.
    • Brockhall, which was dug out under a tree.
    • Asmodeus' lair is an intricate maze of caves in the walls of a quarry.
  • Elves Versus Dwarves: There's no real emnity between the the two, but squirrels and moles respectively check many of the elf and dwarf boxes.
  • Embarrassing Nickname:
    • Most of the vermin get stuck with unflattering nicknames. One can't help but pity the one who ended up as "Stinky".
    • Hogspit from The Long Patrol. Fittingly, he's possibly the most loathsome character in the book.
  • Enemy Civil War: This happens repeatedly. Mossflower, Martin the Warrior, etc.
    • Marlfox does it one better with the Big Bad Band stabbing each other in the back.
    • The war between Ublaz and Rasconza is a major portion of the plot in Pearls of Lutra. The same book gives us Romsca's crew vs. Lask Frildur and the Monitor Lizards.
  • Epic Fail: Swartt trying to take over Salamandastron in Outcast of Redwall goes so horribly wrong and results in so many deaths in his horde that it's practically Black Comedy.
  • Epic Flail:
    • Ferahgo the Assassin and Vizka Longtooth both use mace-and-chains; the former as a secondary weapon, and the latter as his primary weapon. A few other random villains have used them as well.
    • In Loamhedge, Lonna uses Raga Bol's carcass as a flail.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Ferahgo openly states that he'd let Klitch live if he was caught plotting rebellion just because Klitch is his son, Vilaya is very distressed by the death of her confidante Dirva, who was said to be something a mother figure, and a few of the minor vermin are clearly upset when their partners or friends are killed. In The Sable Quean, a vermin speaking of her deceased mate actually says — for the first time in the series — the phrase "I loved him."
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • It is said in Mariel of Redwall that out of all villains, sea rats are the only ones verminous enough to use fire as a weapon. They're even bigger assholes than perhaps even Jacques suspected. Fire is the most dreaded occurrence aboard ship, because it is extremely difficult to stop. Flooding can be contained relatively easily if you're quick about it, and abovewater impacts typically won't put the ship at risk. Fire, however, cannot be contained, and with the tools available at that tech level, cannot be fought. If you start a fire aboard ship you're going to be fishfood shortly. The sea rats more than anyone else should fear fire as a weapon.
    • Sawney Rath refuses to kill a mother nursing a babe.
    • Whether a villain is considered a cannibaleating other speaking animals might be a clue as to how monstrous they're supposed to be — the threat of Cluny gobbling up beasts is offered as frightening to most inhabitants of Mossflower, and not all villains do so. Gulo and his army are considered walking nightmare fuel because of their tendency to eat the bodies of everyone they kill.
    • Vizka Longtooth's pirate crew deserted him after he murdered two of his own crew members in cold blood and for no reason whatsoever.
    • During the performer's play in Martin the Warrior, when Ballaw asks the vermin spectators if he should "kill" a pretty squirrelmaiden with a (trick) knife, none of them speak up, except for Badrang.
    • Most of Razzid's crew is disgusted when he uses a (still-living) member of the crew as fishbait, and flat-out refuse to eat any of the captured fish.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The leaders of shrews, moles, and otters are known only by their respective titles: Log-a-Log, Foremole, and Skipper. A few are given actual names, though.
  • Evil Egg Eater: The various "vermin" villains frequently mention eating eggs. In a setting where all animals — or at least all land vertebrates — are sapient, it's one of the habits that's used to mark them as the bad guys. The protagonists never eat any other animals except fish. One villain in particular, Gruntan Kurdly, is so obsessed that he gets himself killed trying to obtain swan eggs for his dinner.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Cluny and Slagar both ham it up magnificently in the animated series.
  • Evil Is Petty:
    • Ublaz's big Evil Plan, for which he slaughtered entire tribes and put in years and years of work? Was all so he could have a pink pearl crown. He didn't even seem to think the pearls were magical, he just thought they were pretty.
    • Triss. Plugg didn't think King Agarnu would send Prince Bladd and Princess Kurda sailing across the ocean from Riftgard to Mossflower just to find a long-dead skeleton, a gold crown and a pawring; he thought there had to be more to it than that.
    • Ferahgo spends a full season sending trackers after a pair of Mooks who tried to desert. They weren't even competent Mooks. And he'd probably have been better off leaving them alone, as that way the Abbeydwellers wouldn't have got involved ...
    • Swartt Sixclaw is obsessed with killing Sunflash for ruining his six-clawed paw. He spends years hunting Sunflash across Mossflower, throws his army into a meat-grinder at Salamandastron, and ruins countless lives (including those of his wife and son) because he refuses to move on from this grudge.
  • The Evil Princess: Tsarmina. Word of God says that her name came about as a mix of both "tsarina" and "mean".
    • Also Kurda from Triss, who is one of the Pure Ferrets of Riftgard.
  • Eviler than Thou: What tends to result if a book's "A-plot" villain confronts the "B-plot" bad guy (see Enemy Civil War above). A good example is in Loamhedge, when Raga Bol and his searat crew encounters Badredd and his band.
  • Evil Plan: Each book has one but they usually involve conquering Mossflower/Redwall/Salamandastron.
    • The Legend of Luke is a inversion as 2/3 of the narrative is actually The Hero searching for the truth about his father's fate and then going home.
  • Evil Tainted the Place: Saint Ninian's Church used to be a harmless place until Cluny the Scourge captured it and used it as a headquarters for his assaults on Redwall Abbey. After he was defeated, its former occupants never moved back in, leaving it abandoned and letting other invaders claim it during their attacks. After several generations of being a vermin base, an elder Rollo orders it destroyed following the death of a young abbey resident, because it's become nothing but a home for evil.
  • Exact Words:
    • The voices told Cluny the Scourge that after the final battle in Redwall, he would never see the Warrior Mouse again. They never said he'd win.
    • And in that same battle, when they were in the Belltower, and Matthias had run up the stairs, Cluny found Friar Hugo, who had been ringing the Joseph Bell earlier, and took him hostage. Matthias swore on his honor as a warrior that he'd come down if Cluny let Friar Hugo go. He never said he wouldn't do something like cut the rope holding the Joseph Bell, making it fall on Cluny before coming down.
  • Expansion Pack World: Brian Jacques only expected to write one book when he started out, hence the aforementioned Continuity Drift.
  • Extended Disarming: Cluny has quite a few weapons with him that he leaves outside the Abbey when he enters for the parley at the beginning of Redwall. But before he enters, Matthias points out that they know he can use his tail as a weapon, and asks that he also bind his tail around his waist for the duration of the parley. Cluny complies.
  • Eye Scream: Damug Warfang blinds Cregga as she kills him.
  • Facial Horror:
  • False Reassurance: The scene with Matthias and Cluny in the belltower. It's either awesome or cringe-worthy.
  • Family Extermination: In The Pearls of Lutra, the Lutra otter clan is exterminated (except for a Sole Survivor) because of the beautiful pink pearls they owned that the Big Bad wanted for his crown. He never got the pearls anyway, and Martin the Warrior (the Second) shouted the name of Lutra when killing him.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: Some characters die in fairly horrible ways. It can be disturbing to some. One of the most horrifying examples took place in The Legend of Luke. Two rats are bullying a seemingly defenseless otter, taunting about how they're going to drown him just because they can. Martin sees this, but Log-a-Log—knowing who this otter is—wisely tells him to keep Trimp and Chugger from seeing what happens next. And for good reason: once one of the rats got too close, the "defenseless" otter sinks his teeth directly into the vermin's throat. But that wasn't all bad... at least the otter had some company for dinner...
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence: Yep.
    • Some of the more gruesome deaths (mostly of villains) include: being boiled to death by scalding water, having their spine snapped and still living for hours after, being asphyxiated after paralysis, getting shredded to pieces by pike fish, getting force-drowned, being eaten alive by giants snakes, being eaten alive by cannibals, being eaten alive by spider crabs, being thrown onto a row of sharpened javelins, being flayed alive, getting a smashed-in skull, being cloven in two with a sword or axe, being stung to death by thousands of bees, and the usual beheading, impaling, and poisoning. Several good guys die fairly nasty deaths as well, but much more rarely.
    • And in non-death violence:
      • One Big Bad gets his tail cut off.
      • One gets half of his face ripped off by a hawk.
      • Another survives gets bitten in the head by an adder and has a hideously deformed and flayed face to show for it.
      • Yet another has his paw ripped off.
      • One mook gets smashed hard into a wall (and survives).
      • Another mook is tortured on a rack before being strung up and shot full of arrows.
  • Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: Averted for the most part, as every species will use whatever weapon they can get their hands on, but certain species prefer the use of specific types of weapons.
    • Otters use slings and javelins, as they're ranged weapons guaranteed to work when wet.
    • Salamandastron hares use sabres (as befitting their Officer and a Gentleman image), slings and javelins, along with the occasional spear or pike, appropriately for regimented soldiers.
    • Squirrels tend to favor ranged weapons like bows and slings, making good use of their ability to climb and hide in trees.
    • Shrews prefer rapiers to other types of blades.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: In an odd way, with the moles universally being given broad Somerset accents and the hares talking like WW2 RAF pilots. The creatures from "the north" have Scottish accents as well.
  • The Farmer and the Viper:
    • Chickenhound in the first novel, who tried to loot Redwall because of his greed.
    • Despite the Redwallers' adoption of Veil and attempts to nurture him to be good, he's still untrustworthy, nasty, and malicious. He steals from others and eventually tries to poison the Abbot, which ultimately leads to his banishment. Possibly subverted with his dying actions where he takes the blow meant for his caretaker, saving her life, though it's not clear whether it was intentional.
  • Feed the Mole: No, this is not related to Deeper N' Ever Turnip N' Tater N' Beetroot Pie.
  • Femme Fatalons: Tsarmina. Justified since she's a cat.
  • Fiendish Fish:
    • The series features several species of fish treated as dangerous due to their size relative to the Talking Animal characters (mostly pike and eels).
    • "Doomwyte" features a wels (a kind of catfish) living in an underground pool considered an oracle by Korvus Scurr and his snake advisor Sicariss. In fact, Sicariss only pretends she can talk to the wels due to the fish constantly moving its mouth and rising near the surface after associating the crow's presence with food (as he regularly throws in small reptiles and amphibians). The wels then gets in a fight with an adder and loses.
  • Flanderization: It becomes common knowledge that hares have big appetites. Exaggerated with Bescarum (who will steal from various hosts when he gets hungry) and Diggs (who simply never talks about anything else.)
  • Flaying Alive:
    • This seems to be a favored method of execution/torture/punishment of Ferahgo the Assassin. He even keeps some of his victim's pelts for clothing.
    • In High Rhulain, Riggu Felis orders one of his top mooks to do this to one of his son's spies. We never find out if he went through with it, but one of Riggu's soldiers mentioned the spy was chopped to pieces. Which isn't much better.
  • Flower from the Mountaintop: In Salamandastron, one of these is needed to create medicine which will cure a plague.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Lady Cregga Rose Eyes may not sound like a fearsome name, until you remember badgers' eyes glow red when the Bloodwrath takes them. Meaning Cregga's is always on.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Generally speaking, when a badger goes into Bloodwrath mode, chances are that one of these is going to follow. The most spectacular in the series is probably Boar the Fighter versus Ripfang's horde. That being said, the Bloodwrath allows even non-badgers to plow through enemy ranks with reckless abandon, as shown with Cuthbert Blanedale Frunk.
  • Food Interrogation: In Mossflower, after Ferdy and Coggs are captured by Queen Tsarmina's forces, she tries to get the famished hedgehog children to tell her the location of the rebel woodlanders' headquarters by offering them a tray of food. Determined to be "warriors", they refuse to tell her.
  • Food Porn: Lots in every book; it's unsurprising that they ended up publishing an official cookbook for the series. The books feature a standard rotation of bread, cheese, soup, pasties, salad, sweets, etc. Jacques said in a meet-the-author feature that, growing up in a food-rationed era, he was always annoyed by the lack of descriptions of food in the books he read, and would often just read recipe books.
    • This is interestingly less frequently described in the first book, and when it is Jacques gives more detail than usual ( he describes “tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, devilled barley pearls in acorn purée, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg”).
  • Foregone Conclusion: Since a previous book starts with Martin already on exile alone, it was practically a given that he would either leave Rose behind or she was going to die.
  • Foreign Queasine: Tagg is initially apprehensive when he hears about "snakeyfish pie", a pygmy shrew delicacy made from elvers (young eels). He winds up loving it due to the fact that it's prepared in such a way that it doesn't look, smell, or taste like an elver, which is rather ironic, as eel's real world deliciousness has driven it to the point of being endangered.
  • Foreshadowing: Cluny the Scourge has repeated nightmares about being pursued by Martin the Warrior, and is always woken up by the ringing of the Joseph Bell just before Martin is about to kill him. At the end of the first book, the Joseph Bell crushes Cluny to death.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: Absolutely no one remembered (or really even cared) about Sister Atrata's death. The author didn't even mention her being buried.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: Outcast of Redwall is not only more epic in scope than the rest of the series, but also much less clear-cut, averting the usual Black-and-White Morality in favor of more fleshed-out, and sympathetic "vermin", and Redwallers committing unprovoked acts of violence (including killing of innocents).
  • For the Evulz: While the main motivations that drive typical vermin are power and plunder, sometimes revenge, most of them also engage in meaningless cruelties just for the thrill.
  • Framing Device: Often used in the books that had their story taking place in the past, where the story is told by someone to an excited group of Dibbuns.
  • Freudian Excuse: Slagar the Cruel claims to have one during a conversation with the titular mouse in Mattimeo. Sam Squirrel is quick to correctly educate the young mouse that not only was Slagar's fate his own fault, but that he killed a Redwaller after stealing a large number of things from the abbey as payment for them saving his life.
  • Freudian Excuse Denial: Romsca in Pearls of Lutra tells Abbot Durral that she became a corsair because she likes it, and while she had a hard life, she will not use it to excuse her choices in life.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Chickenhound, aka Slagar the Cruel, started in Redwall with a minor role as the son of the healer/spy Sela. After they're caught and his mother is killed, and he flees Redwall after accidentally killing Methuselah, he appears to have been killed by Asmodeus. In Mattimeo, he's the Big Bad, who now leads a band of slavers, kidnaps the young of Redwall in "revenge", and is feared for his ruthless nature. Alternately also Chekhov's Gunman.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: Averted. Canon states Matthias is the equivalent of about thirteen during the events of Redwall and you see him drinking ale and cider with the rest, and in British English, there is no such thing as hard or soft cider: cider is alcoholic by definition. In fact, the Food Porn has lots of gratuitous drinking, vermin sentries are easily taken out of action by leaving grog lying around were they will find it, the multiple Poison Chalice Switcheroos only work because of the senior vermin's love of a nice goblet of damson wine, and, in earlier novels, it is strongly implied that some of the adult good guys are dead drunk at the victory feasts.
  • Funetik Aksent: Used a lot:
    • The moles' use the accent from The West Country, which is portrayed as indecipherable in the first book, burr aye! Methuselah has to translate mole dialect into ordinary speech for Matthias! It's toned down in later books, but remains prominent.
    • Characters from the North are portrayed as having Scottish accents.
    • The Hares have a Verbal Tic modeled after the stereotypical 19th/early 20th century British military officer, ending most sentences with "wot".
  • Furry Confusion: Mostly avoided, though there are still a few oddities:
    • Lizards and frogs are either savage but sapient carnivores or cute pets with about the intelligence level of real-world monkeys.
    • Eels appear to be monsters in Taggerung, but in Mossflower, a deal is made with a talking eel to free him in exchange for their lives. The fish are otherwise always non-sapient.
    • In the first book, Cluny and his horde are first shown traveling in a cart drawn by an apparently non-sapient horse.
    • In the third book, Basil Stag Hare jokes that the magicians be allowed in Redwall "as long as they don't pull rabbits out of hats", which makes one wonder how that trick would work when the rabbits are the size of the performers.
    • In Sable Quean, the heroes take care to avoid ground-nesting birds that could give their position away, again implying they're human-sized (or that hummingbirds nest on the ground).
    • In Rogue Crew, the fox marauders' war cry is "YIPYIPYIPYIP!!!", which is the sound foxes make in real life.
  • Gambit Roulette:
    • Subverted in Mattimeo. A plan which includes four thugs sneaking into the abbey, spiking everyone's drinks, make them drink them at the same time by calling out a toast and then kidnap all the young ones fails. However, the antagonists still succeeded in their Evil Plan, as they simply killed nearly everyone who was still awake.
    • Ublaz and Rasconza's fight for power in Pearls of Lutra.
  • Gargle Blaster: The infamous Seaweed Grog favored by pirates and corsairs.
  • Gender Bender:
    • In one chapter of the first book, Killconey the ferret becomes female for a while.
    • Pallum is a boy in the book, but a girl in the show.
  • Gender Is No Object: In the later books, at least. In the first few books there don't seem to be any female vermin whatsoever, but in the later ones gender seems to be assigned to them at random, and it doesn't really make a lot of difference to their characterisation. As for the good guys, the very first general of the Long Patrol was female, and while only one female has wielded the Sword, females make up a reasonable proportion of the most respected fighters.
  • General Failure: While many of the Redwall villains exhibit this from time to time, Gruven from Taggerung seems stuck in this mode. His mother, Antigra, believes that her son is the rightful Taggerung, even though Grissoul and the signs say different, and fills his head with that knowledge. When he finally does go on his journey to kill Tagg, he shows he can't differentiate between left and right, is all but ignored by his group and is outright bullied by self-appointed leaders Vallug Bowbeast and Eefera (who's been given secret orders to kill Gruven if he shows fear). When he and his two remaining allies attempt to kill Vallug and Eefera via ambush, he is reduced to a sobbing, weeping little bitch who manages to escape in a later battle, only to get recaptured by Ruggan Bor. But take heart, for Gruven does technically become the Taggerung... for about all of ten seconds. He does have the excuse of being a spoiled teenager.
  • Gentle Giant: Most badgers are portrayed as loveable, valiant, cute creatures who are friendly to almost everyone. Just don't piss them off.
  • Geographic Flexibility: Distances between places, and the locations of places are not very consistent between books. A particularly egregious example of this can be seen when in Salamandastron it takes days or weeks to traverse the distance between Redwall and Salamandastron (which is on the coast), whereas in Pearls of Lutra the Abbeyfolk are able to make it in a night of forced marching - but then in the book immediately following it, a big source of tension revolves around whether or not the Long Patrol will arrive in time to assist the Abbeyfolk against a siege despite knowing about it weeks in advance.
  • Giant Animal Worship:
    • Taggerung has a tribe of pygmy shrews who feed on schools of tiny eels that migrate every year. In order to ensure that this happens, they choose a tribe member by lottery (they walk under a dripping stalactite and whoever gets splashed is chosen) to be fed to Yo Karr, an enormous eel they believe is responsible for bringing its tiny brethren. Tagg is having none of this and kills Yo Karr himself.
    • In Doomwyte, Korvus Skurr's tribe of crows, carrion birds and reptiles lives in a cave where a wels (a giant catfish) lives. They believe the wels is an oracle that only Skurr's snake advisor Sicariss can understand, and throw reptiles into its pool to attract it and interpret its wisdom. In fact it's just a giant fish, the "speech" is actually the wels opening and closing its mouth with Sicariss pretending to understand it. It ends up in an underwater fight with Baliss, a blind adder whose face is full of infected hedgehog spikes... and still loses to the snake.
  • Gideon Ploy: In Salamandastron, Feragho has his forces approach the titular mountain at night with a torch in each hand, trying to make their force appear twice as large as it actually is. The veteran defenders of Salamandastron are neither fooled nor impressed.
  • Give Chase with Angry Natives: Running through hornet's nests or crow-infested trees while making ungodly noise is a common tactic for Redwallers, and the hapless pursuing vermin fall for it every time.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Any creature with the Bloodwrath ends up with glowing red eyes, which is how Lady Cregga Rose Eyes got her nickname.
  • God Save Us from the Queen!:
    • Tsarmina, who after killing her father and framing her brother for the act, begins a merciless campaign to bring all the inhabitants of Mossflower under an iron paw.
    • Vilaya, the titular Sable Quean, very much Would Hurt A Dibbun (and in fact kills one) and disposes of loyal minions when she no longer has need of them.
  • Good Animals, Evil Animals: Played to a T. Vermin (foxes, rats, corvids, most mustelids and cats) are evil; mice, badgers, moles, and so on are good. There are exceptions on both sides, but not many.
  • Good Is Bad And Bad Is Good: Some of the vermin's behaviour. See the Villain Song in Triss, "'Tis Nice To Be A Villain".
  • Good Is Not Soft: In the first book (and the first season of the animated adaptation), the heroes of Redwall plot to end the siege by sniping Cluny. Furthermore, the plan would have worked if extenuating circumstances hadn't intervened — in the novel, Cluny's ambitious minion Cheesethief makes an unwilling decoy by wearing Cluny's armor, while in the animation, Cluny gets wind of the plot and uses it to dispose of a troublesome underling. Either way, the Redwallers were certainly pleased when it looked like they took him out.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Any hare noted to be a good boxer in the series will normally only utilize their paws for combat, with a sling for distance.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Subverted occasionally; Folgrim has terrible facial scarring and a lost eye, but he turns out good.
    • Also includes Lonna Bowstripe from Loamhedge; he has a pretty hefty scar across his face from an encounter with Raga Bol's scimitar, but he's a good guy.
  • Gorn:
    • The description of the pus-oozing, festering wounds on Baliss's face are a bit too enthusiastic. You almost feel sorry for it.
    • Also, the infamous searat ballad "Slaughter of the Crew of the Rusty Chain", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • In the first book, Cluny has a very vivid nightmare/vision involving the shades of his dead captains — and each ghost still bears the marks of their deaths by crushing, falling, poison, boiling alive, etc.
    • The final duel between Martin and Tsarmina in Mossflower quickly degenerates into a shockingly graphic war of attrition to see who can take the most horrible wounds.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: In theory, this should have made the television series Lighter and Softer. For example, when it came to Sela's death, it sounded less like Cluny's horde speared her and more like they hacked her apart.
  • Got Me Doing It: The accents can be catching, burr aye.
  • The Great Serpent: Justified, as the movie takes place in a Mouse World inhabited mainly by small woodland creatures such as mice, weasels, and moles. Snakes, usually adders, are portrayed as giant monsters, essentially the world's equivalent of dragons.
  • Greater-Scope Paragon:
    • In some of the books, Martin the Warrior takes on this role after he has died, from either an invisible influence acting through the heroes to an occasional Spirit Advisor in dreams. However, his power from beyond the grave is limited. Though Martin's legendary sword is powerful in the hands of a hero, he himself warns that nothing stops any villain who obtains it from using it for evil.
    • It is sometimes implied that the Badger Lord fortress Salamandastron has some kind of supernatural influence on it, as its forge's wall is full of carved images of both history and prophecy, which no one knows where they come from. On occasion it's been shown that badgers under the effects of Bloodwrath may carve the prophecies on the walls with their claws, but still no one knows where they get their visions.
  • Greater-Scope Villain:
    • Malkariss acts as this in Mattimeo, as Slagar The Cruel is in fact working for him throughout the novel. And then he turns out to be an decrepit, misshapen wimp.
    • King Agarnu in Triss. Just like Malkariss, he does virtually nothing but sit on his ass all day. And like Malkariss, his death is quite pathetic.
  • Grim Up North: Allusions to the North being war-torn are made in most of the early books, and the later books that take place up there... In Rakkety Tam, we see a shipload of Northerners, cannibals all. A number of the vermin hordes come from there, not surprisingly.
    "Mercy me, no right-thinkin' Redwaller ever goes north. That's badlands. Tis a hard and hostile region we know little about."
  • Grotesque Cute: The entire series is basically about about cute little fluffy animals wielding bigass weaponry and killing each other in various unpleasant ways. Hell yeah.
  • Gut Punch: There's at least one per book to remind the readers that, despite the seemingly safe and kid-friendly setting, anyone can be kidnapped or tortured, enemies can appear at any time, and Anyone Can Die, no matter how thick the characters' Plot Armor is.
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Played straight in the animated series, possibly subverted in the books as prisoners are occasionally stripped as a form of humiliation. Oddly enough, in the animated series, all of the characters are dressed well enough...except for the otters, who go around in the buff.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Killconey, who is chopped in half by Matthias.
  • Handicapped Badass: Axtel takes a spear to the foot in his first battle, leaving him with a permanent limp. He still slays more vermin than all the other Redwallers.
  • Hard Truth Aesop: The series has the repeated message that some people have no good in them. Anyone who thinks otherwise will only be harmed. It's most stark in Outcast of Redwall, where it is feared an infant is born bad... and they turn out to be right. To the point that it turns out they gave him a name which is an anagram for "evil" and "vile". Yet even after he dies saving someone, this attitude doesn't change. It's portrayed as the nature of certain species (with just a few exceptions).
  • Hated by All: Gruven. Not a single person even remotely likes him. When he's not being a snobby little brat who runs his mouth, he's being a Smug Snake and insulting anyone at the first opportunity. When he's not running away from his enemies, he's either trying to outsmart them or he's begging to be spared. Even Gruven's mother Antigra found the stoat annoying, and only put up with him because he was her son and because she needed him to rule the Juska tribe. However, it seems Brian did this on purpose as an ironic joke, as The Taggerung is prophesied to be the perfect warrior, practically a demi-god in terms of skill. Gruven lacks skills in anything and is useless at everything, yet still stubbornly claims to be the "True Taggerung".
  • Hate Sink: Some books have a minor villain who manages to outdo even the Big Bad in terms of sheer loathsomeness. Cheesethief from Redwall and Hogspit from The Long Patrol are two standout examples.
  • Have a Gay Old Time: "Quean" does not mean "queen", nor does it, as Mr Jacques claimed in interviews, mean "wicked woman". According to the online dictionary, it actually means either "promiscuous woman" or "prostitute". That being said, he's not wrong, as "wicked woman" was once also a term for a prostitute. Also, the two meanings of the word "mate" in vermin slang can lead to some unintentional Minion Shipping moments.
  • Headdesk: In Sable Quean, Skipper closes his eyes and puts his head on the battlement when the moles inform him they've finished building their catapult. In the cellar.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam:
    • Bladeribb from Pearls of Lutra. After he gets captured by the Guosim and Martin's friends, he helps guide them to Ublaz's lair without much coercion, despite knowing he'll probably get killed by either Ublaz or one of Martin's companions. Just when it looked like he might have a change of heart and assist the heroes in slaying Ublaz's army, the author Dropped an Iceberg on Him.
    • Gripchun from The Sable Quean, one of the few vermin who gleefully told the Redwallers all the information he knew in regards to the Big Bad's operations. Instead of trying to use him against Vilaya's Ravagers, the Redwallers decide to trade him over to them, and he's subsequently slain by his own army's archers.
  • The Hero Dies: Usually averted. The heroes will most likely die of old age in-between books, and their death will only be briefly mentioned in the chronological sequel. Played tear-jerkingly straight with Urthstripe the Strong, and to a lesser extent Luke the Warrior.
  • Hero Killer: Several, the most prevalent are Asmodeus from Redwall, Vallug Bowbeast and Eefera from Taggerung, and the Adder Triplets from Triss.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: When a major good character dies on-page, nine times out of ten it's by gloriously giving their life for the others. Major Frunk (dies to kill Slothunog), Shogg (takes an adder bite meant for Triss), Bragoon and Saro (die holding back Kharanjul's horde), Warbeak (charges into vermin archers to draw their attention), and Mask (takes an arrow meant for Gingivere), among others, are all notable examples.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners:
    • Martin and Gonff especially; Deyna and Nimbalo from Taggerung have this as well.
    • Rakkety Tam and Wild Doogy Plum from Rakkety Tam.
    • Sunflash and Skarlath from The Outcast of Redwall. Although many fans believe that, after Skarlath dies and Sunflash starts writing poetry about him, it went a tad bit further than "life partners".
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Some of the Big Bads die this way. Which makes their death that much more enjoyable to read about.
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs:
    • "the leaf calling the grass green"
    • "I'll bet you an apple to an acorn"
    • "Stop taking a seavoyage to get round a cockleshell"
  • Hook Hand: Raga Bol
  • The Horde: Pretty much every vermin army is called a horde, and most apply to this trope. Gulo's horde does to a T.
  • Hostage MacGuffin: Gabool the Wild intends to use Mariel as a hostage to force her father Joseph to design and build a belltower for him. Things do not go quite according to plan.
  • How Dare You Die on Me!:
    • "No! Don't die! If you die, I'll kill you! Oh, I'm sorry, dear."
    • From Marlfox: "If you die, I'll never speak to you again, ever!"
  • Human Pincushion: Skalrag is hung from the gates of Marshank and used as target practice for Badrang's archers.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick:
    • Stringle. Since his boss was Gruntan Kurdly, that's not saying much.
    • Nightshade to Swartt Sixclaw in Outcast of Redwall. If it weren't for her being Swartt's eyes, ears and brains, he probably wouldn't have been able to take over the horde he commanded in the book, much less hold power for any length of time.
  • Hypnotic Eyes: The serpents, specifically Asmodeus, have these. A non-serpent character, Ublaz "Mad Eyes", also has this type of gaze (and uses it to hypnotize his own snake).
  • I Am a Humanitarian: Gulo and his horde are infamous for eating anything that moves. The Flitchaye, a tribe a runty weasels, are presumably cannibals too. Also see Carnivore Confusion.
  • I Am Not Weasel: Hares hate being called rabbits. Eventually Justified: rabbits are shown to be harmless examples of British Stuffiness antithetical to the one personality most hares share. One vermin soldier in Rakkety Tam gets the crap beaten out of him by a hare that knows boxing, partly for eating several other hares earlier in the book and partly for repeatedly calling him a rabbit.
  • I Am the Noun: The Warden of Marshwood Hill with his "I am the law!" and a snake that declares "I am death to all beastssssss!"
  • I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: In Mariel of Redwall, Gabool's headquarters is on Terramort. Combined with a Bilingual Bonus (or even a tri-lingual one), "terra" is Latin for land and "mort" is French (or a derivative of the Latin) for death. So, essentially, the Land of Death or simply Deathland.
  • Idiot Ball:
    • Passed around occasionally in Triss, particularly when Malbun and Crikulus leave Redwall in the middle of the night, alone, with no weapons or means to defend themselves from danger.
    • Ruggan Bor doesn't get this passed to him so much as shoved forcefully into his hands. Throughout the story, he's never shown to be anything but a competent, calculating leader who weighs all his options and remains calm. He comes to Redwall seeking information, gets it, and is about to leave when circumstances lead him to believe he's inherited the title of Taggerung. All at once, he starts laughing maniacally and turns to attack the abbey. Then the resident badger lord and his hares swoop in out of nowhere to stop him.
  • I Don't Pay You to Think: This is a common attitude among the vermin commanders in the series.
    Tsarmina: Thought?! Who gave you permission to think?
    • This actually gets one of the villain underlings killed in Mossflower. Sent out to trail Tsarmina, he comes back to one of her commanders and says that he thought he'd better come back and report. At first, he is praised, but then another commander asks "Who told you that you had permission to think?" and tells him go to right back out and find Tsarmina. He does so, and ends up getting killed by Tsarmina, who in a haze of crazed revenge believes him to be her traitor brother Gingivere.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: In Lord Brocktree, Fleetscut dies with a smile on his face; "Funny. Don't feel hungry anymore. Jolly cold, wot!"
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Deaths by impalement are pretty much inevitable, what with all the pointy sticks and swords being waved around. For just a few examples: Cheesethief gets shot with a ballista arrow almost bigger than he is, Cludd is thrown onto a row of otter javelins, and Badrang and Zwilt among many others get run through by Martin's sword.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: A minor example, but this seems to be the only explanation as to why when Woodlanders and Vermin get into the final epic battles, almost ALL the vermin die, while the woodlanders lose probably less than six characters at most, a few others injured.
  • Impossibly Delicious Food: Say what you will about Brian Jacques, but anyone who can make food which consists mostly of vegetables sound so delicious to children that there was demand for a book of recipes from the series has to be doing something right.
  • Improvised Weapon: Occurs many times in the series.
    • In general, the average weaponry that the Redwallers use tends to consist of garden implements, kitchen tools, and maybe homemade spears.
    • In the first book, Cluny has Redtooth & Darkclaw dismantle the fence surrounding Saint Ninian's Church so that the horde can use the iron spires as spears.
    • Mariel Gullwhacker's favorite weapon is a knotted rope she uses like a flail.
  • Inertial Impalement:
    • In the animation of Martin the Warrior, Martin's sword falls from Badrang's paws and into the prison pit. Martin dives for it and holds it up, and when Badrang leaps into the pit after him, he gets impaled on it. This moment provides the page image for the trope.
    • Baliss' breakdown starts like this. He's blind and has a mouth full of dead crow, so he can't tell that he just headbutted a hedgehog so hard it rammed quills deep inside both of their bodies. Unfortunately, where Corksnout gets the spikes pulled out before they can fester, Baliss has no such luck.
    • The Bellmaker has a rare example of a hero dying this way. Mellus, the resident Badger Mother, charges Cap'n Slipp when he's threatening some dibbuns. He raises his knife just as she bowls him over, and she ends up being stabbed through the heart and killed instantly.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: This exchange from the first book basically destroys any Plausible Deniability Sela and Chickenhound may have had:
    Chickenhound: Yes, sir! Give us a chance, and we'll tunnel with the best of them.
    Cluny: Who said anything about tunneling? I only mentioned digging.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Vilu Daskar finds that the ship Luke is chasing him on is called the Sayna, after Luke's dead wife. He makes a snarky comment about how it would have been "saner" for Sayna to stay away. Cue blank stares from his crew.
  • The Insomniac: Gabool the Wild, Tsarmina and Mokkan. Also Mokkan's mother, Queen Silth (Marlfox), Cluny the Scourge (Redwall) and Ungatt Trunn (Lord Brocktree).
  • Inspirational Insult: In The Bellmaker, several of the heroes are trapped in a tower, with their only hope of rescue a rope brought to them by a shrike (aka butcher bird). Unfortunately, the rope is too heavy for the bird, so the hare starts insulting him (a previously noted Berserk Button). The shrike makes it to the tower and is fully intent on proving its name, but is convinced to leave instead.
  • Instant Expert: It seems that any good character who wields the Sword of Martin becomes an expert swordsman and all-around warrior... even if they haven't been shown to wield a sword before (Triss, though some may claim she'd be inherently skilled because her dad was a swordmaster). Even if, in the case of Laird Bosie (Doomwyte), the user has explicitly stated they are bad at using swords because they're unwieldly. Would have been an obvious case of enchantment that grants Martin's swordsmanship skills to the wielder, but the Sword of Martin is explicitly stated to be totally nonmagical in earlier books.
    • Averted in The Rogue Crew, where Uggo couldn't wield the sword to save his life. He could barely even hold it, let alone swing it, without tripping or stumbling.
  • Instant Sedation: The Flitchaye tribe uses knockout gas (resembling ether or chloroform) to anaesthetise travelers, to rob and to kill them. Oh, and No! You cannot nullify the knockout gases' effect on you by stuffing ramsons or garlic or whatnot up your nostrils!
  • Intelligible Unintelligible: Corporal Rubbadub from The Long Patrol speaks only in drum sounds (and one time, with a cymbal crash), but others in his regiment understand him fine.
  • Interspecies Romance:
    • Although Bragoon and Sarobando probably come the closest, this never actually occurs among the woodlanders. It does, however, show up in songs and occasionally among the vermin; Flinky and Crinktail, a stoat and a weasel, are a deeply loving couple.
    • There are many occasions when an attractive member of one species gets young members of another to get all flirty, like Nimbalo (mouse) with a shrew tribe, or Gonff with the hare maidens of Salamandastron.
  • In the Back: Possibly the most cowardly act from someone you'd expect to be Always Lawful Good occurs in Marlfox. Fenno stabs Log-a-Log in the back instead of facing the shrew with honor, then runs away and deserts the Guosim. What happens to him afterwards will make you cheer for joy, and eventually, he gets it in the end.
  • In the Blood: Played straight in the series, where certain species are always designated as "good" or "bad." Even when a ferret (one of the "vermin" species) named Veil is raised from infancy in the abbey, he ultimately turns out to be evil. "The goodies are good and the baddies are BAD, no grey areas." (Weirdly, cats are one of the few species that's an exception to this rule, being good or evil — in a series where mice are the standard heroes.) There are occasional exceptions, with good-aligned "vermin species" or evil-aligned "good species" but they are few and far between.
  • Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?: Brom asks Felldoh if he'd like some cordial. Felldoh replies, "Does a fish like water?"
  • It's All About Me: Vilaya, who won't think twice about killing those who saved her life.
  • It Has Been an Honor: Rowanoak gives a short speech about this when all hope seems lost in Martin the Warrior.
  • I Want Them Alive!: A common statement of the vermin commanders if they're looking to take prisoners or make an example.

    Tropes J-N 

  • Jerkass:
    • Cheesethief... big time. He has absolute contempt for his fellow hordebeasts, especially non-rats, and only cares about his own advancement. His response when Cluny offers to promote Scragg the weasel ahead of him? He shoves Scragg out of a high tree, critically injuring him, then steps on his throat until he suffocates, taunting him the entire time. He sneeringly mocks Killconey for mourning Scragg's death, lying that it was his own "clumsiness." Then when he does get promoted, he works the troops under his command like a slave driver, and starts fantasizing about supplanting Cluny as horde leader. No one mourns when he gets a giant arrow in the chest.
    • Tubgutt. He gets better though after his near-death experience with The Deepcoiler.
    • Tugga Bruster is a particular standout for being pretty much the most dickish member of a goodbeast species in the series. It's bad enough that he has the dubious honor of being the only Log-a-Log in the series to be stripped of his title because no one wants him as leader and his death is just about the only instance of a vermin killing a goodbeast where the vermin is portrayed as being more sympathetic.
    • Hogspit from The Long Patrol, who can hardly even appear without the phrase "nasty-looking" following close behind. He's also The Neidermeyer and a Dirty Coward, and his utterly humiliating death scene is guaranteed to get you cheering.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • Pakatugg comes off as nothing more than a common Jerkass in Mariel of Redwall. Up until he sacrifices his life to ensure the rescue of a bunch of oarslaves he doesn't even know.
    • Warbeak, a hot-headed Sparra warrior who nonetheless forges a fast friendship with Matthias.
    • The Guosim zig-zags this trope throughout the series. Sometimes they're rowdy, abrasive beasts who are only helping the heroes because they hate the vermin more. Other times they'll gladly lend a paw whenever Redwall or the main band of heroes are in danger.
    • After the Flanderization kicked in, some of the hares became so snobby and selfish that it was more annoying than funny. But the heroes still tolerated them for their impressive combat skills and bravery in battle. Scarum, for example, just barely (and arguably) managed to keep himself from being a full-on Jerkass who only cared about himself.
  • Jesus Taboo: The characters live in an Abbey up the road from an abandoned Church and several of the characters are Abbots and other religious personages. And yet there's not a single mention of anything resembling God or Jesus or religious services. In Redwall (the original novel), the Abbey inhabitants were expressly stated to be an "order", with robes and prayers and celibacy and all that. Of course, due to Early-Installment Weirdness, a lot of what happened in Redwall has been unofficially declared Canon Discontinuity.
  • Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Warden, a heron who keeps the reptiles and amphibians of his swamp under control by eating them strategically when they commit a serious disturbance; also a nod to Aesop's fable "The Frogs Who Desired A King".
  • Kaiju: There are several species whose size relative to the heroes makes them this.
    • The Welzz in Doomwyte is a monstrous catfish that can eat birds whole. Not monstrous enough to survive being chokeslammed by Baliss who also counts as one.
    • The Slothunog is apparently the Loch Ness Monster.
    • Salamandastron had what is implied to be a dinosaur skull used to scare off vermin with tales of dragons.
  • Karma Houdini: Despite the fact that nearly every major villain in every book dies, there have been a few exceptions...
    • Juska chieftain Ruggan Bor in Taggerung was humiliated and sent home with his tail between his legs by badger lord Russano the Wise. Possibly justified in that he hadn't actually harmed Redwall yet.
    • In Loamhedge, Badredd and his cronies ran off into Mossflower after escaping from the clutches of Raga Bol. (But seeing as they were Affably Evil Punch Clock Villains, it is doubtful that any readers would want them dead.)
    • Also, Agrill in Martin The Warrior. He drugs the protagonists for absolutely no reason other than disliking them, and it's made very clear that, had they not been in the company of Boldred, he would have murdered them. Not only is he not punished for this, no one even seems to care.
    • Any vermin who successfully desert their army, such as Sneezewort, Lousewort, Ashleg, Ripfang, Grand Fragorl, and more, though in Ashleg's case he deserts the army because among other things Tsarmina made him walk ahead of her troops in the desert sun. However, Ripfang gets what's coming to him in Mossflower (assuming it's the same character).
    • Triggut Frap, who's left dangling from a tree. Considering that he threatened to feed little Diggla to a bunch of pikes, he got off easy.
    • Gruntan Kurdly's Brownrats who weren't under Stringle's command. Also, what was left of Vizka Longtooth's Sea Raiders.
  • Karmic Death: Many of the main villains had very karmic deaths. Examples: Cluny was crushed by the bell that had earlier awakened him from his nightmares; hydrophobic Tsarmina drowned when she nearly killed Martin the Warrior; Fortunata was killed by Lady Amber and her archers for helping the aforementioned Tsarmina take over and oppress the woodlanders before going to spy on them, Malkariss was stoned to death by the very creatures he had enslaved; Gabool was stung to death by his pet scorpion, whom he had used to execute foes previously; Ublaz was bitten by his pet snake; Princess Kurda fell and stabbed herself on her own broken sword; Riggu Felis was killed by the same barbed star that he earlier used to trap Pandion; Vilaya fell on her own poisoned dagger, which she had used to kill numerous characters.
    • Some of the minor villains or Dragons have karmic deaths too. For instance, Brool and Renn are killed by Veil shortly after they tied him up and stole all his food and gear; the Wraith is accidentally knocked off Salamandastron by Porty; Klitch drinks the water Farran poisoned just when he thinks he's survived the gruesome battle at Salamandastron; Karangool was presumably whipped and killed by Bucko Bigbones, whom he had tortured in the past.
    • Tugga Bruster is stabbed in the chest by Tala as revenge for killing her husband Chigid. This is a rather interesting case. Unlike all the names listed above, Tugga Bruster wasn't evil or even a vermin. He was just an asshole who made even the Punch Clock Villains look good. Not even the Redwallers or his own son missed him.
  • Kick the Dog: Many villains do it a few times per book, but even good guys aren't above pulling this on vermin from time to time.
  • Kindhearted Simpleton: Blaggut, who easily made friends with the Redwallers, was trying to help out everyone including his captain who was planning to loot whatever he could from the Abbey and seems fairly low intelligence overall (which his captain often mocks him about). He turns against him later though, and is one of the few good characters from "vermin" species.
  • Kissing Cousins:
  • Knows the Ropes: Mariel fights with "Gullwhacker", a length of heavy rope with large, hard knots at the ends that make it an effective bludgeoning weapon. When she first washes up on the beach with Identity Amnesia and the rope tied to her, she uses it as an Improvised Weapon out of necessity, but later designs several other versions and even names herself after it.
  • Lame Rhyme Dodge:
    "There's worse cooks aboard than me."
    "What was that?"
    "I said the sky's as blue as the sea."
  • Lampshade Hanging:
  • La Résistance: Unless the enemies are an invading mobilized army, there will be one.
  • Large Ham:
    • Cluny and Ublaz, in particular, are as close to this as you can get in a text-based medium.
    • Some of the hares. For example, Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle, aka Clecky.
    Clecky: What ho, the jolly old camp! Rovin' fighter returnin' with tales of derring-do, high adventure, and all that nonsense, wot!
    • Dingeye and Thura successfully annoy the Abbess into letting them in via overblown crying fits.
    • Oakheart Wytherspike, a hedgehog actor, and his family.
    • Ballaw as well as Florian as both tend to act overdramatic in their shows, Florian especially, as he tends to stay in-character even when not doing a show.
  • Lancer vs. Dragon: In "Lord Brocktree", the heroes persuade the hare king Bucko Bigbones to join them in their battle against the warlord Ungatt Trunn by participating in his contest. Bucko is reluctant at first (having been publicly defeated by a haremaid) but when he learns who they're after he's a lot more willing as he sees an opportunity to avenge himself on Karangool, Ungatt's Captain-in-Chief, who had tortured Bucko in the past.
  • The Last Thing You Ever See: In The Pearls of Lutra, the Big Bad tells Martin (not that one, but Matthias's descendant who was named after him) that the last thing he'll ever hear is the Big Bad's name.
  • "Leaving the Nest" Song: Invoked and Exploited in Triss, where two of the main characters are running away from home due to what they feel is stifling parenting. They spend the night with an old otter, who sings so many heartrending songs about mothers never seeing their children again that they leave the next morning before she ends up making them go home. Once they're gone, it's revealed the otter knew exactly what she was doing: reminding them their departure wasn't as easy for their parents as they imagined it to be.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Felldoh. His rousing nature and ultimate death nearly cost the life of all the Fur'n'Freedom fighters. While his plan would have worked if Badrang hadn't played dirty, he didn't consider that leading a small, personal war against the main antagonist, whilst all of his friends fight the big, official war against the main antagonist, might not pay off.
  • Left-Justified Fantasy Map:
    • The Mossflower region is fairly near a western coast, so most maps stop there (it helps that Salamandastron, one of the major landmarks, is on said coast).
    • Even some of the books primarily set in other regions use the same trope — Southsward in The Bellmaker is also on a western coast.
  • Legacy Character: The Log-a-Logs, Foremoles, and the Skipper of Otters.
  • Legend Fades to Myth: An interesting example that may or may not be intentional, or simply part of the greater retcon that followed the series, occurs concerning the foundation of the Abbey and the arrival of Martin the Warrior told in the beginning of the first book (subject to Early-Installment Weirdness). This differs in quite a few details from the presumably true account of the events in the prequel Mossflower, although it does manage to at least get the cast of characters correct. The story told to Matthias implies that the Abbey already existed when Martin showed up, it was under siege at the time by their enemies' armies led by a wildcat, and Martin came in the nick of time to rescue them. In fact, the abbey was built on the site of the battle after everything was said and done, the reverse was closer to the truth, and Martin was involved in the battle from the start once he arrived from parts unknown to them.
  • The Legend of X: The Legend of Luke.
  • Lighter and Softer:
    • The animated series tones down the violence significantly from the book by use of Bloodless Carnage and Gory Discretion Shots. Considering how violent the animated show could get regardless - including the instances where they didn't use a Gory Discretion Shot - this says numbers about how bloody the books could get.
    • Particularly in the case of Skalrag the Fox. In the books, he's put on the torture rack before being hung from the gates and shot full of arrows. The animated series simply has him being tickle tortured. Even then, Skalrag is being tickled while hanging from a rope hundreds of feet in the air—and his laughter eventually turns into a scream, which cuts off with a wet thump.
    • Oddly one of the more violent children's books... what network do they choose to put it on? PBS. The most family friendly network on the planet.
  • Linked List Clue Methodology: Many of the riddles present in the books take this form.
  • Little Miss Badass: Quite a few crop up in the series, but Mariel (who kicks plenty of ass, often with nothing more than a length of knotted rope) is probably the most outstanding example.
  • Long-Lived: While most of the animals in the series have average lifespans equivalent to that of human beings, badgers can live to be ridiculously old, probably near the equivalent of 150 if they were humans. Bella and Cregga both live through three books, with Bella living long enough to still be around to tell Gonff's grandchild (who is almost three generations after her own) a story. Cregga says in Taggerung every grey hair on her head represents a season she's lived through (and it's said at least once her once-black stripes are now entirely silver) and it really doesn't sound like she's talking about that in a hyperbolic manner.
  • Long-Running Book Series: 22 novels (plus a couple minor side stories) from 1986-2011.
  • Losing Your Head: A lot of villains end this way. Gulo is a particularly notable example — he gets decapitated by the sharpened edge of a shield.
  • Low Fantasy: There is no magic. The only kinds of supernaturalism are prophetic visions and the appearance of Martin the Warrior to abbeybeasts.
  • Luminescent Blush: Martin in the animated series, after telling Rose he could listen to her singing forever.
  • Lying to the Perp: In Outcast of Redwall, someone is poisoning people using wolfsbane, so the herbalist announces the fact that handling the plant stains the perpetrator's hands red, so they will soon be revealed, while also making note of the wash that can remove the stain. Naturally the poisoner tries to clean himself with the wash, which is actually beet juice, and is caught literally red-handed in the act of doing so.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Exactly how Mokkan killed his sister Lantur, in order to become king.
  • Malicious Misnaming:
    • Constance calls Ironbeak "Ironbum" and similar names.
    • Pikkle refers to Swinkee as "Stinky", and Tubgutt as "Tubbygutts".
  • Mama Bear:
    • In Redwall, for example, Constance nearly crushed Cluny and Redtooth with the grand feast table...
    • In The Sable Quean, Clarinna Kordyne. Whether you're some random vermin mook or Zwilt the Shade, you do not threaten a mother hare's kid in front of them. Especially if you're the guy who killed her husband.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Ublaz dresses himself in the finest clothes and jewels he could get his hands on. His weapons are equally opulent, being a finely crafted silver dagger with sapphires in the handle. He even kickstarted the conflict of Pearls of Lutra by demanding to have the titular pearls for his crown from a tribe of otters at any cost.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A variety of Plot Coupon artifacts and trinkets, notably Martin's sword and the tapestry depicting him (easy answer for those two is that they're mundane by themselves but Martin's spirit uses them to reach out to others).
  • Meaningful Name: They're freaking everywhere:
    • Methuselah, the oldest mouse in Redwall.
    • Constance is always around to help.
    • Skipper is a captain of river otters.
    • Boisterous hares Tarquin and Lorquin, after Greek gods who liked to party.
    • Martin is from the Latin for "warrior."
    • Gonff is from "goniff," Yiddish for "thief."
    • Colin is Gaelic for "child." He's a childish brat.
    • Keyla is Greek for "pure of heart." He's friendly and selfless.
    • Salamandastron may be after the mythical version of the salamander, since that creature can live in fire and it's an extinct volcano (and they had a dinosaur skull at one point to scare off vermin).
    • At the time Veil, the son of a warlord, is taken into the Abbey as an infant, Bella says she named him that because there's a veil over his life - they know nothing about him. Later, it's revealed that her other reason for the name is that it anagrams to "vile" and "evil":
      Give him a name and leave him awhile, Veil may live to be evil and vile. Though I hope my prediction will fail, and evil so vile will not live in Veil.
    • Tsarmina, after the Tsars of Russia.
    • Gabool the Wild ruled over Terramort. Terra=land, mort=death. He ruled over the Land of Death.
    • The Latin (taxonomic) name for wolverines is Gulo gulo. So ... the wolverine Big Bad is just named "Wolverine"!
    • Likewise, the otter clan Holt Lutra was named after the taxonomical name of the European river otter: Lutra lutra.
    • Mellus is from Meles Meles, the Eurasian badger, and Brocktree is from an Old English word for badger.
    • Plumpen is Dutch for "dormouse."
    • Tammbeak and Rocangus are both falcons with Scottish accents.
    • Russa Nodrey is a red squirrel with no home ("drey" is a word for a squirrel's nest). This is actually explained in the text.
    • Verdaugua is Latin for "green eyes."
    • Simeon is Hebrew for "he who hears." He's blind, so relies on his hearing.
    • Rose's full title was Laterose. Interestingly, the first book is set in the Summer of the Late Rose.
    • Braggio Ironhook was incredibly ambitious and vain, and loved to boast about himself.
    • Korvus Skurr (a raven) from Corvus, the scientific name for crow. Strangely enough, he holds actual crows in contempt.
  • Medieval Stasis: The time period never changes, and the weapons never improve, despite at least 28 generations of abbots of Redwall having come and gone. Not even rudimentary gunpowder weapons (which were used in the late Middle Ages) are seen. However, they don't have countries, so no prolonged wars with traditional land-based enemies which would inspire an arms race. The only established permanent residence with warlike tendencies is Salamandastron, and they're not exactly filled to the brim with inventive types, just straight-up soldiers.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Russa Nodrey from The Long Patrol, who conveniently died shortly after Tammo Took a Level in Badass and joined the Long Patrol.
    • Both Methuselah and Abbot Mortimer are mentor figures to Matthias in the first book. They both end up dead.
  • Methuselah Syndrome: Badgers live very long lives; it's noted in Outcast that they age in years instead of "seasons". Not to mention Methuselah himself.
  • Minion Maracas: Plugg has a habit of picking up crew members who do something stupid and beating their heads together. His crew loves him anyways.
  • Misplaced Retribution: Slagar the Cruel blames the Redwallers for the death of his mother and his facial disfigurement, and in revenge he steals their children to sell as slaves. However, all the bad things that happened to him were a result of he and/or his mother's villainous ways, and none of the inhabitants of the Abbey were responsible for any of it. In fact, they tried to help him when he dragged himself to Redwall after being badly injured by Cluny the Scourge's horde and left for dead alongside his mother. His repayment for their kindness was to steal from them and murder the elderly Methuselah.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: Mostly avoided, since the majority of the animals are native to Britain and the few that aren't are explicitly stated to be foreign. Played straight by the sea otters of Green Isle in High Rhulain; sea otters are only native to the north Pacific, and are not found in Britain at all.
  • Missing Mom: Veil Sixclaw's mother dies in the wake of giving birth to him. Klitch and Tsarmina, who are also their warlord fathers' heirs, don't even get their mothers mentioned. Bluefen is also the child of a warlord, with her mother being left unmentioned and unseen. Mariel's mother is also not mentioned.
  • Mistaken for Murderer: In Salamandastron, a pair of stoats temporarily residing at the abbey accidentally kill a Redwaller with a bow and arrow, then flee the scene. Samkim is the first to (literally) stumble on the scene, tripping over the discarded bow which he instinctively picks up; another abbey resident enters and assumes that Samkim was the (accidental) killer, as he is holding the bow and had previously been reprimanded for reckless archery.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The Wearets (part weasel, part ferret).
  • The Mole: Druwp, who feeds Badrang information about what the slaves are doing. Before you ask, he's a bankvole, not an actual mole.
  • Monster in the Moat: In Marlfox, Castle Marl is built on an island in the middle of a vast lake whose waters are infested with pike (known locally as the Teeth of the Deeps). The Marlfoxes tend to punish failure in their underlings by throwing them in the lake, and the last Marlfox is Eaten Alive when a slave knocks him off the boat he was escaping in.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • Many of the novels are well-known for jumping from a death-laden battle scene to flat-out humor. Mossflower has Martin encoutering a massive crab with giant pincers, and shortly after it begins to attack him, Gonff shoves a stick between its claws and dances with it, joking about it the whole time..
    • In Martin the Warrior, Badrang and Clogg exchange insincere, flowery compliments when the latter returns Skalrag. This bit of comedy is followed by the line, "An hour later, Badrang had Skalrag on the torture rack extracting information from him."
  • Mook Promotion: Tends to happen a lot, especially when The Dragon or one of the Co-Dragons is killed halfway through the novel and the Big Bad needs a replacement. But more than likely, said mook will not handle his or her new promotion well and will either get demoted or killed off even faster than said dragon. Just ask Zurgat, Lousewort, Graywort, or Hogspit, to name a few.
  • Mouse World:
    • Redwall (the novel) seemed to take place in one of these, what with bits like an entire army of rats hitching a ride on a horse-drawn cart and mentions of piglets, town dogs, and Portugal (Part of Cluny's introduction including speculation that he was a "Portuguese rat.") By the second novel, however, all aspects of humanity had been removed.
    • There is a vague hint of humanity or a higher life form of some sort in High Rhulain, where Riggu Felis speaks of his ancestors (the Wildcats) liberating the Feral Cats from some unnamed group that had domesticated them.
  • The Movie: Averted. More than half a dozen times! Most of the projects failed primarily due to Brian Jacques' general distaste of movie adaptions. The ones who didn't suffer from this actually made it into pre-phase before it was discovered they lacked the rights. Those who had rights and made it into pre-phase turned out to be mere practical jokes or misunderstandings. Currently, however, a DeviantArt group is working on a feature-length adaption of Mossflower, the second book of the series. Not to be confused with another so-called "movie" that was brought out (which was just a re-edited version of the animated series with the Filler episodes removed).
  • Multiple Demographic Appeal: Children like the books because the plots and characters are quite clear-cut; this becomes a liability with adult readers, most of whom like the books rather because of Jacques's clever use of language.
  • Multiple Head Case: The adder triplets.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: The Duel of Insults in Marlfox. The characters shout insults at each other and react as if actually wounded. Sesstra, Zassaliss and Harssacss basically got a Hydra into this, as well.
  • Murder Ballad: "Slaughter of the Crew of the Rusty Chain."
  • Murder by Inaction: Ungatt Trunn dies when, after surviving being thrown into the sea with a broken back, finds himself stranded as the tide comes in. Then his much-abused former seer shows up to gloat, not doing a thing to get him out of the rising water.
  • Murder by Mistake: It happens a lot:
    • Redwall has Cheesethief, whom Constance thought was Cluny.
    • In Mossflower, Tsarmina fires an arrow at her brother as he, Ferdy, Coggs and Mask escape from Kotir. Mask ran behind them and coincidentally ended up shielding Gingivere and Coggs from the arrow.
    • Happens twice in Salamandastron, with both cases regarding Ferahgo. First, Lord Urthstripe fires an arrow at him, only for Goffa to step in front of him and coincidentally get hit. Later, Forgrin and Raptail kill Sickear because they thought he was a wounded Ferahgo lying on a rock. And then Ferahgo shows up behind both of them...
    • Martin the Warrior also has two cases. First, Badrang conspires with Gurrad to poison Cap'n Clogg, whilst Clogg simultaneously conspires with Oilbeak to have Badrang knifed. So naturally, Oilbeak accidentally chucks his knife at Gurrad's throat, and then proceeds to steal the tainted drink from Gurrad's body, which he later drinks from. Later, Badrang's archers fire arrows at a small group of animals they thought were Fur and Freedom Fighters. They turn out to be Hisk and his four trackers.
    • During Swartt Sixclaw's failed attempt at taking over Redwall in Outcast of Redwall, a rat captain named Scraw gets shot full of arrows after Swartt's archers mistook him for woodlanders hiding in the bushes.
    • In Loamhedge, Lonna picks up Raga Bol's body and uses it as a shield. The Searats chuck a few spears at Lonna, but hit Bol instead.
  • Mutual Kill: There is quite a large amount of these in the series, between both hero-and-villain, and villain-and-villain. Some notable ones are Urthstripe and Ferahgo, Romsca and Lask Frildur, Sagitar and Rasconza (this makes two occasions in one book), and Argulor and Bane.
  • Mutually Unequal Relationship: At the beginning of Salamandastron, Mara thinks she's found a friend in Klitch, as both are confident young beasts feeling oppressed by their fathers. Unfortunately, Klitch's father Ferahgo the Assassin is the warlord of a vermin horde, and the only reason Klitch feels oppressed by him is because he thinks he can rule it better than his father, and only maintains his friendly facade with Mara to get information from her.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Some of the Redwallers who haven't experienced war have this reaction after killing someone. Burlop from Rakkety Tam breaks down and starts crying before he decides to head back to Redwall after killing one of Gulo's soldiers.
    • In Mossflower, Splitnose is horrified when, during a heated argument/fight, he realizes that he has fatally wounded his companion Blacktooth.
  • Myopic Architecture: The main gate of Redwall Abbey is large and thick, impervious to even the most dedicated of sieges. Basically, not one invading vermin horde has ever gotten through it. The tiny wicker side-gate, on the other hand, has been breached by countless invading hordes over the seasons, probably accounting for every successful invasion of the abbey. This is presumably intentional, since it would be easy to station three well-armed, armoured guards there during a siege to hack up any single file intruders who tried to get in. Unfortunately, being peaceful monk and villagers, the Redwall inhabitants never think of that.
  • My Nayme Is: Some characters' names have the word "white" spelled as "wyte" and "earth" spelled as "urth" (including twin badgers Urthstripe and Urthwyte).
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Moles are all hardworking, salt-of-the-earth types except maybe three: a scholar, a wanderer, and the first warrior mole ever, Axtel Sturnclaw. However, the other moles don't make any fuss about it.
    • Lonna Bowstripe is the first badger to use a ranged weapon, despite the narration insisting on how huge he is (even moreso than it usually does when describing badgers).
    • In general, the further along you are in the series the more likely you are to see evil members of "good" species, with voles, for whatever reason, being more likely to be self-serving thieves or outright Quislings, along with the occasional hedgehog or squirrel.
  • Naked People Are Funny: When Badrang's in need of a piece of rope, he cuts a random minion's belt, causing said minion's kilt to drop off and everybeast to start laughing at him.
  • Named After First Installment: The first book in the series is Redwall, with the series itself being about Redwall Abbey.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Cluny the Scourge. Was considered an old tale for little children to behave. And then he actually shows up at the abbey's doorstep.
    • There's also Asmodeus, aka Poisonteeth or Giant Ice Eyes. He lives up to all of them.
    • Slagar the Cruel. Emperor Ublaz "Mad Eyes". Gabool the Wild. Gulo the Savage. The list goes on and on.
      • And if you are vermin, Martin the Warrior or anybeast carrying the title Champion or Warrior of Redwall.
      • Badger Lords tend to get impressive titles as well. Orlando the Axe, Sunflash the Mace, Boar the Fighter, Uthrun the Gripper... Lady Cregga Rose Eyes would appear to be a subversion... until you learn she's called that because where Badger Lords' eyes only glow red when the Bloodwrath is on them, and hers is on all the time.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter:
    • Mention is made of searats using "very colourful language" and hares and otters singing a Bawdy Song, but we never actually see any.
    • Grood in Lord Brocktree. Apparently, he's got quite a tongue on him for being a young squirrel...
    • Apparently, Dotti from Lord Brocktree could give Grood a few lessons in choice language.
  • Narrator All Along: In several books, it is revealed at the end in a framing story that one of the characters who appeared in the story is in fact telling the tale.
  • National Weapon: Several of the species have trademark weapons, though not consistently through the books.
    • Shrews use rapiers.
    • Otters use slings and javelins.
    • Squirrels are archers.
    • Hares of Salamandastron use different types of spears — pikes in one book, lances in another.
    • Rats of Malkariss use either short stabbing spears or bows.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name: Ungatt Trunn's Blue Hordes. They insist that they're "The Chosen Ones" and that every creature that isn't one of them is a member of "the lower orders". Also, Riftgard can only be ruled by albino "Pure Ferrets", who all speak with ridiculously broad faux-German accents.
  • The Neidermeyer: Cheesethief is hated by all of the other hordebeasts due to the viciousness with which he drives them during his brief stint as The Dragon. It's best not to think about the implications that hordebeasts used to serving under Cluny find Cheesethief's behavior unacceptable.
    • Hogspit from The Long Patrol. He gets off on abusing his subordinates for no reason at all, treats those under his command as expendable fodder, and is humiliatingly outmatched when he tries to take on Log-a-Log himself.
    • Swartt Sixclaw is a rare example of a Big Bad being this. He has a lot of trouble keeping his own troops in line (which is justified, since a lot of them were co-opted from other hordes). By the end of the book, most of his troops have concluded that he's led them from one disaster to another, and Veil, his own son, delights in pointing out what an inept leader he is.
  • Never My Fault: Slagar, otherwise known as Chickenhound, who blames the Redwallers for scarring his face when he reveals it to Mattimeo, claiming that he did nothing to deserve his fate and was driven out of Redwall for no reason. Sam Squirrel, who was alive when the Late Summer Rose Wars happened, actually knows the truth and tells Mattimeo that he took advantage of the Redwallers' kindness to steal everything valuable in the Abbey after they saved him from dying, then murdered Methuselah before he had an unfortunate run-in with Asmodeus.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • Thank you, Searats, for killing Raga Bol in a stupid attempt to take out Lonna Bowstripe. You guys deserve a medal.
    • Good job burning down Riggu's fortress, Lady Kaltag.
  • Noble Demon: Verdauga Greeneyes is willing to negotiate with the woodlanders instead of going to war with them, although his reign HAS made life difficult for the woodlanders. Unfortunately for him, his daughter Tsarmina kills him and earns the title of the Big Bad instead.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: The word "love" is rarely used, and even Rose and Martin hardly even hold paws onscreen, but their relationship is still very clear and a firm favourite with a lot of the fans, possibly because it's subtly handled. This is in stark contrast to Rick Riordan's mythology books, which features prominent romance with kissing important to the stories despite being for the same reading age. There are also no references to any kind of sexuality: no female characters are shown pregnant.
    • Antigra, however, was shown nursing Gruven at the start of The Taggerung.
    • In The Legend Of Luke, a late summer song about fruit harvesting has a reference to sweetness being lost "like a faithless lover's kiss." It's one of the most overtly risque moments in the series, which says a lot.
    • A few couples (Matthias and Cornflower, Gonff and Columbine, Tarquin and Rosie) officially marry and have kids. This only happens to characters who are featured in more than one book, so that kids just sort of appear in the sequel.
  • Nobody Poops: You'd think this trope would be averted all the time considering how much the Redwallers eat...
    • Not to mention a scene from Eulalia! involving Gorath. He's forced to drink tons of rainwater since Vizka's crew was ordered not to feed him anything. Vizka also told his crew not to undo his chains for any reason or go anywhere near him since Gorath could easily kill one of them. You do the math.
  • Nominal Importance: Zigzagged. In Rakkety Tam, Captain Shard is presented as The Starscream to Gulo, but dies around halfway through in a random battle. In the final act, one of the smartest vermin (who knows not to run from Gulo) lives until the final mop-up, but is only ever referred to as "the old fox".
  • Nonindicative Name:
    • What the heck is a Walking Stone? A tortoise. Justified in that the northlands are unlikely to have many walking around (and it's even mentioned that it came from far south).
    • The siege weapon used to demolish Kotir in Mossflower is referred to as a "ballista", but the description of the machine as having counterweights and a throwing arm implies that it's a trebuchet instead (a ballista is essentially a giant, spring-loaded crossbow). The Sable Quean has another siege weapon being described as both a catapult and a ballista by different characters, implying it may be a difference in regional vernacular in-universe.
  • Noodle Implements: Spriggat, Samkim, and Arula threaten to do something involving "three squashed frogs and those maggoty apples", among other things, to get a captured rat to talk.
  • No One Could Survive That!: Stated outright by Log-a-Log when Gulo the Savage went over the waterfall in Rakkety Tam. In the first book, Cluny the Scourge took a tumble from the very top of the Abbey wall, suffering cracked ribs, a smashed claw and countless other brutal injuries; Abbot Mortimer started to invoke this, but Constance told him Cluny would be back.
  • Not Drawn to Scale: There are frequent problems with this. In several stories a badger or hare climbs the same flight of stairs as a mouse, or using the same tools. Jacques has HandWaved this by saying that the characters are whatever size you think they are. This presented a bit of a challenge for the developers of the videogame, whose scale ended up being roughly that of the television series.
  • Not Helping Your Case: Veil is treated like a delinquent even when he didn't do anything, so he turns to thievery and eventual attempted murder.
  • Not Quite Dead:
    • Skipper from The Long Patrol. He gets sucked down a well with a yellow eel wrapped around him and presumably drowns/gets eaten. A couple chapters later, he's found inside a Mossflower stream safe and sound. Plus he managed to kill the eel.
    • A much more disturbing example would be Ungatt Trunn.
    • Stukkfur, a water rat from Marlfox, survived being slammed into the Abbey wall after a failed attempt at breaching Redwall. But not without getting a massive bruise and losing all his teeth.
    • Gruven tricks a stoat named Rawback into falling into a swamp and supposedly drowning after his plan to kill Deyna goes horribly awry. An insane Rawback shows up a few chapters later, much to Gruven's dismay.
    • In Taggerung, Deyna gets shot in the chest with an arrow before killing the main villains. He's not found until sometime later with the arrow still inside him. Luckily, Skipper gets him to the "Otterfixer" to get him healed and he makes a full recovery.

    Tropes O-T 
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: King Bull Sparra really is pretty unhinged, but he pretends to be more so than he actually is. Matthias, in turn, fakes Cloud Cuckoo Lander status to avoid Bull Sparra seeing him as a threat.
  • Officer and a Gentleman: The Long Patrol hares, being based on popular perception of British R.A.F. pilots in WWII.
  • Off with His Head!: It's a fairly common form of death for the villains due to the high Family-Unfriendly Violence. Notable ones include Gulo, Asmodeus, Vallug Bowbeast, and Gruven.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Cluny just before being crushed by the Joseph Bell.
    • Nightshade gets a particularly glorious one when she realizes that killing Skarlath only enraged the already nigh-unstoppable Sunflash into performing a Foe-Tossing Charge toward her.
  • One Dose Fits All: In Mattimeo, Slagar the Cruel successfully drugs an entire abbey into unconsciousness with a toast, with apparently adult badgers, adult mice, and their children all taking the dose amount. The only three exceptions stayed awake because they were distracted during the toast so Slagar's goons just murder them, though one survives.
  • One-Hit Kill: Even some of the burliest of characters will go down quite easily. Just ask Bluggach, who, after his Badass Boast, gets whacked in the head by Gurgan's mallet just once and dies.
  • One-Liner, Name... One-Liner: "Nor did I, Pikkle. Nor did I."
  • One-Man Army: Badgers, or any creature for that matter, under the Bloodwrath can carve through a horde with ease. Also, Gulo the Savage, a wolverine.
  • One-Steve Limit: Setting aside the characters named after each other In-Universe (such as the three Martins) and the Legacy Characters Log-a-Log and Skipper:
    • Quite a few minor characters, mostly minor, have the same name; there's two characters each named Ash, Badtooth, Barfle, Billum, Bladetail, Blodge, Blowfly, Brugg, Buckler, Bungo, Catkin, Drigg, Drull, Flibber, Frang, Frink, Grumby, Gruzzle, Gurdle, Heartwood, John, Joseph, Lugg, Plugg, Rogg, Rooter, Ruggan, Rungle, Scratch, Serena, Shorebuck, Stinky, Thrugg, Trey, Trimp, Urthclaw, Urthrun,
      • There are two searats named Ripfang, one in Mossflower and the other in Lord Brocktree. Interestingly, since Lord Brocktree takes place before Mossflower within a relatively close time frame, it's entirely possible that they are the same rat. Jacques stated that that was merely a coincidence, but many fans like to think otherwise.
    • There are three characters named Rose: two Sisters at Redwall (one in Mattimeo, one in The Bellmaker), and Martin the Warrior's lost love. There are also three Petunias: a Dibbun vole in Mariel of Redwall, a hare in High Rhulain, and a Guosim shrew in The Sable Quean.
  • One-Word Title: The first three books, Redwall, Mossflower, and Mattimeo, among others. The first two being Portmantitles and the third being a Protagonist Title.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Was a fan assumption about the vermin until Loamhedge, when it was made explicit. Evidently even vermin aren't sadistic enough to inflict names like "Stinky" on their offspring at birth.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: The Marlfoxes have no problem at all doing each other in, but if an outsider kills one of them, hoo boy...
  • Open Shirt Taunt: In Salamandastron, Klitch strips off his shirt and dares Urthstripe to shoot him, pointing out that the prisoners Sapwood and Oxeye will die if Klitch or Ferahgo are harmed. In Lord Brocktree, Fleetscut opens his shirt during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Jukka, shouting that if she kills him instead of coming back to help defend Salamandastron her home will be invaded next.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The closest the series gets to this trope is with Axtel Sturnclaw, a sledgehammer-wielding mole berserker with all the digging skill of his peaceful comrades. Some mace-wielding moles also show up in Bellmaker.
  • Our Hydras Are Different: Invoked in Triss, where a trio of newly-hatched adders had their tails entwined by the flail of King Sarengo. As they grew into adulthood, the chain remained wrapped around them, so they had to learn to move as a team. They are horrifying in close combat, and for most of the book terrorize characters by their mere presence, the raw and rotting flesh of their tails giving off a sickeningly sweet odor.
  • Overlord Jr.: Klitch to Ferahgo, and Pitru to Riggu Felis. Mostly subverted with Veil to Swartt.
  • Overly Long Name:
    • Jodd's full name is the single longest one in the series. According to him, You Do NOT Want To Know what it is, and when it's revealed it spans roughly two and a half lines of text before he gets cut off.note  Captain Tramun Josiah Cuttlefish Clogg also counts.
    • As does Laird Bosie McScutta of Bowlaynee (Doomwyte) and now, Subaltern Meliton Gubthorpe Digglethwaite (The Sable Quean).
    • Bellscut Oglecrop Obrathon Ragglewaithe Audube Baggscut (Boorab the fool)
    • Hares in general, really. It's rather rare to find a hare who gets spotlight and has less than three parts to their name.
  • Papa Wolf: Matthias is an all around nice person throughout the series, but mess with Cornflower, Mattimeo or Redwall abbey in general and you'll meet the end of his blade. Just ask Cluny, Asmodeus, and Slagar, to name a few.
  • Parental Neglect: Swartt's relationship with Veil. Progresses to Parental Abandonment when Veil is still a baby, after he gets lost in a ditch and Swartt can't be bothered to go back for him.
  • Pendulum War: Almost every military engagement in the series that isn't a Curb-Stomp Battle. Let's say, that whenever there is a big battle in the end, vermin usually have an upper hand at the beginning, until heroes manage to close the gap in numbers/invent a better plan. However, smaller skirmishes against named heroes usually are curb stomps in said heroes favor (even if villains manage to bury one or two of them under their own dead). Conservation of Ninjutsu?
    • Particularly the final battle of The Long Patrol, which also served as the single largest engagement in the series. Damug spends the first 2/3 of the battle attempting to advance upon the combined Redwall army on top the hill and eventually succeeds in surrounding them and threatening to annihilate them. Cue Cregga Rose Eyes and the Salamandastron army.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Dibbuns".
  • Performer Guise: In Mattimeo, the evil Slagar the Cruel and his band of slavers want to infiltrate Redwall Abbey to kidnap the children. They achieve this by disguising themselves as a circus troupe, and while his goons perform, distracting the Abbeydwellers, Slagar goes around placing a drug in their drinks to make them fall asleep so his slavers can grab the children.
  • Perilous Old Fool: Bluddbeak was once a great adder killer, but is now old, rheumatic and blind. However, he thinks he can take on a trio of adders (and Ovus is only too happy to help.) The result? Ovus dying, nothing left of Bluddbeak but scattered feathers, and Skipper mourning "Ole fools, brave, perilous ole fools, why did ye try it?"
  • Pike Peril: Pike are a recurring obstacle to river travel, though they end up eating uncautious vermin more often than heroes.
    • An otterclan managed to capture an enormous pike which they call Stormfin, and use it to great effect to defend their homes (they beat a drum to announce it's being let out so the otters know to get the hell out of the water). Stormfin has associated its holding pen with regular food, so it will return eventually.
    • A shoal of hungry pike known as the Teeth of the Deeps lives in the lake where Marlfox Island is situated, making escape impossible and approach difficult. The Marlfoxes feed dissident beasts to the pike, so naturally karma (and the pikes) bites them when Lantur is pushed into the lake by her brother Mokkan, who is later knocked into the lake while trying to escape and ripped apart by the ravenous pikes.
  • The Pigpen: The natural state of vermin. Flinky actually sings a song about how bathing is dangerous. Truth in Television, as ferrets, weasels, and stoats, along with foxes, do produce a stronger odor than, say, mice or squirrels. It's completely natural and expected of them. So it stands to reason that vermin consider frequent baths and flowery soaps to be unnatural and unattractive.
  • Pirate Girl: Romsca. She gets a Villain Song about how cool being a corsair is.
  • Pirate Song: In Triss, Captain Plugg Firetail's crew sings three songs, which the audiobook gives shanty-like tunes to: "The Freebooter's Way", "Dirty Desperate Crew", and "Freebooters' Song", about how they enjoy being marauders.
  • Pirates: Lots of the vermin are pirates. They're often some of the worst of the villains.
  • Planet of Hats: Or rather, species of hats.
    • For example, hares have two staple personalities: "old veteran" and "cocky youngster" (which might or might not intersect with "annoying moron"). Besides them, there are Flat Character soldiers.
    • Shrews and otters are tough river wanderers.
    • Foxes are slightly more intelligent and tend to be seers more than most vermin, and some play up their supposed mystical abilities.
    • Any rat that isn't a fearsome warlord is likely to be dull-witted Cannon Fodder.
  • Playful Otter: Like hares, otters by in large are friendly, energetic creatures that enjoy life and can rip you a new behind both on land and water.
  • Plot Armor: As the series goes on, it gets stronger and stronger, and covers more and more of the heroes. Earlier in the series Anyone Can Die. Taken to extremes in Taggerung. With the exception of Rillflag and Cregga Rose Eyes, the only good guys who die in the novel are nameless Red Shirts or characters who were forgotten shortly after their death.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: Rose in Martin the Warrior, whose death is what drove Martin into heading to Mossflower (thus leading up to the events in Mossflower) to begin with.
  • Plot Tumor: Salamandastron becomes progressively far more important.
  • Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo:
    • Lantur poisons her mother this way in Marlfox. The twist is that Silv expected her to pull this stunt, but Lantur managed to trick her into thinking too much and drinking from the poisoned cup anyway.
    • Swartt Sixclaw pulls off a good one in Outcast by poisoning the chalice itself instead of the wine. Balefur even Lampshades this outright when Swartt invites him to sit down and have some food: "Yer a canny creature, Swart, ye drink from the bottle an' ah drink from the silver cup, eh? Is that what yer thinkin'?"
  • Poisoned Weapons: A few of the nastier villains.
    • Swartt, especially, had a poisoned chalice he used several times.
    • Wraith used a poisoned dagger so lethal it could kill in seconds with the poison alone, without even letting the victim cry out.
    • In The Sable Quean, Vilaya is shown using a tiny poison dagger against her enemies.
    • Also, the adders fall under this heading by default.
    • Cluny uses a poisoned spike attached to his tail.
  • Pokémon Speak: "Asmodeusssssss!" Hearing that name is enough to chill any woodlander's blood, but it's when Asmodeus starts talking normally that shit is about to get horribly real.
  • The Power of Rock: In the audio book of Rakkety Tam, "What is fear/I know it not/What is death/The foebeast's lot..."
    • In a semi-Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, Keyla and Rose sing the details on Badrang's slaves (including Martin) and where they are to each other in the animated series episode "The Return of Clogg".
  • Precision F-Strike: There are a few instances of the word "Hell", for example in the name of the "Hellgates" that Vulpuz rules over.
  • Precursor Heroes: Martin the Warrior started out as this for the Abbey, as the first book took place well after his time, as do most of the others that mention him (although he later got a few books detailing his exploits). Luke the Warrior and Co. serve as this to Martin himself, with Martin only learning about what he'd done second-hand.
  • Product-Promotion Parade: A variant without the Merchandise-Driven aspect.
    • In Mattimeo, new characters are seemingly introduced like mad (for example, Cheek Stag Otter and Sir Harry the Muse arrive without any explanation of their origins).
    • Lord Brocktree and his group show up with little-to-no-explanation of their origins.
  • Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: Almost every single book that takes place after Martin's death has a prophetic dream involving his spirit. Every single one of these has him delivering a prophecy in rhyme.
  • Prophecy Twist: Most famously in The Bellmaker: "Five will ride the Roaringburn, but only four will e'er return." They assume it means one of them will die, but it actually just means one will stay in the south.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality:
    • Very much so in some of the later books. While the heroes don't exactly do anything as despicable as the villains, some of them commit acts that would brand them as Anti-Heroes when compared to earlier Redwall books, yet no one calls them out on it. At one point in High Rhulain, Tiria, who killed a rat by complete accident, gets yelled at by her father for not slaying all the other water rats she found, and the book makes it seem as though killing vermin just because they're vermin is perfectly acceptable.
    • Apparent in Loamhedge. Bragoon and Sarobando walk up to a band of vermin, insult them, steal the fish they're cooking, and create a scuffle that inadvertently gets one of them killed. Note that they didn't do this because they were on the cusp of starving to death, and the band hadn't yet been seen to do anything more villainous than sit around cooking fish.
  • Psycho for Hire: Baliss, who was hired by Korvus Skurr to strike fear in the Redwallers. Not his best decision...
  • Psychopathic Manchild:
    • The Gawtrybe are an entire tribe of Chaotic Neutral squirrels who do whatever seems like the most fun at the time. Also, Prince Bladd has hints of this, though Vague Age means he may in fact be fairly young.
    • King Bull Sparra, an Ax-Crazy king who likes to be amused and gets violent over minor things.
    • Gruntan Kurdly, who's just a fat rat who obsesses over hard-boiled eggs and has a "what I say is always right!" attitude.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Most of the vermin, if they're not pirates or bandits, just want to live a peaceful life where they don't go hungry.
  • Put on a Bus: Some of the vermin characters run away rather than being killed, and are never seen again.
  • Pyromaniac: Prince Bladd: "I like playink mitt fire!"
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Martin certainly gets one in Martin the Warrioras if the ending wasn't already depressing. After everything he goes through, the only thing Martin earns is his freedom and his sword. By the end of the book, he probably would've preferred death so he could spend the afterlife with his late girlfriend Rose. And his sword? It got snapped in half early on in Mossflower.
  • The Quiet One: Tan Loc from Mariel of Redwall. Has two bits of dialogue in the last phase of the book, the first being his name and the second one talking to a searat that murdered his family:
  • Race-Name Basis:
    • The beaver from Redwall, who is referred to as "the beaver" or "the solitary beaver."
    • The watervole from Eulalia!, who's just referenced as...the watervole. Even the Redwall Wiki never found out his name and just called him "Grumpy Watervole."
    • Also the baby mouse in The Bellmaker, who is only ever referred to as "(the) mousebabe."
  • Raised by Orcs: The entire point of Taggerung, where a baby otter is raised by vermin, as they believe him to be the titular Taggerung.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • Fleetscut dishes out a redeeming one to Jukka in Lord Brocktree.
    • Vizka gets one as well towards the end of Eulalia!, from one of his own Sea Raiders.
    • Blaggut delivers one as he strangles his former captain, cementing his popularity among the readers.
  • Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: A common trope in the series, with the rare singular variant used for at least the first book as Matthias, Warrior of Redwall and Martin the Warrior's reincarnation, was around 14 or 15 (in human years) when he began wielding the Sword of Martin.
  • Recognizable by Sound: Hon Rosie has a very loud, distinctive laugh that the others always recognize her by. "Whoohahahahahoohah!"
  • Redemption Equals Death:
    • Zig-Zagged with Veil, sort of. Subverted because he's still considered a bad guy after Taking the Bullet for Bryony, and inverted because even though he spent practically every one of his scenes being a horrid little bastard, Bryony thought he was good but misunderstood, only "realizing" he was evil after said Taking the Bullet.
    • Subverted with Blaggut: his Heel–Face Turn causes him to strangle Captain Slipp to death.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Anyone with the Bloodwrath gets these. Guess where Cregga Rose Eyes got her nickname. The same can be said for Lord Asheye, who was in the Bloodwrath so often when he was young that his eyes were more-or-less red 24/7, though that cost him his sight in the end.
  • Red Right Hand: Swartt and Veil Sixclaw; take a guess what it is. Veil also gets a literal case when he's exposed as a poisoner at Redwall with a dye that stains his hands red.
  • Redshirt Army: The Guosim and the Long Patrol are pretty much the two major militarized woodlander factions in the series. While this undisputably also puts them in Badass Army status, they also provide most of the series' supply of nameless Red Shirts.
  • Reed Snorkel: In Mattimeo, Mattimeo and co. use them while hiding underwater from the slavers.
  • Reforged Blade: Martin the Warrior's sword, which belonged to his father, is broken near the start of Mossflower. He wears the broken hilt for most of the book until he reaches Salamandastron, where it is then reforged by Lord Boar using a "fallen star" (i.e. a meteorite). This rebuilds it into a seemingly unbreakable blade (it hasn't been mentioned to need reforging since) and also begins its legendary status (helped along by Martin proceeding to kick much ass with it).
  • Reincarnation: Matthias is established to be a reincarnation of Martin, and it's possible that so are all the other Swordbearers. Cornflower might be Rose's reincarnation, but it's not spelled out. Matthias's case is rather unique within the trope, as Reincarnation more or less means that one's soul/spirit/ghost is recycled into a new person. Yet both Martin and Matthias's spirits existed simultaneously.
  • Related in the Adaptation: Cornflower is John Churchmouse's daughter in the cartoon.
  • Repeated Rehearsal Failure: In Mossflower, Cludd orders Thicktail to tell Queen Tsarmina that there's been a suspicious robin hanging around (possibly spying on them), but not to tell Ashleg or Fortunata so that they'll not steal the credit. Thicktail has a hard time remembering as he returns to the castle, and ends up muttering, "I must tell the Queen that a robin has seen Cludd hanging about. No, that's not right. I must tell the robin that Cludd has been hanging the Queen..." He never ends up passing on his message to the queen, since he was so distracted by trying to remember it that he didn't pay attention to his surroundings and promptly winds up as the eagle Argulor's next meal.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Practically every reptile and amphibian in the series is evil. Frequently, they are depicted as being far worse than the vermin. Nearly all are cannibalistic. Exceptions made for the ones which have occasionally been seen as pets — see Furry Confusion. Some come across a little more as True Neutral, however.
  • Repulsive Ringmaster: Slagar the Cruel, who disguises himself and his minions as a travelling circus, of which he is the ringmaster.
  • Revenge Before Reason:
    • This is arguably the entire theme of the book Martin the Warrior. The two main character, Martin and Felldoh, are both driven by a desire for revenge on Badrang and in both their cases it costs them everything. Both may have the reason being that they wish to stop an evil slaver and free the slaves but it's made clear, especially in Felldoh's case, that their main motivation is revenge. Even after all the slaves are freed, Felldoh insists on staying around Marshank to attack Badrang and swears a litteral oath of vengeance when Juniper is killed in a raid; when Felldoh has a duel with Badrang he could have easily just killed the tyrant but chose instead to beat him in retribution for all the years he'd spent as a slave, which gave time for Badrang to call up his reinforcements which ends with Felldoh killed. Martin's desire for revenge and reclaiming his father's sword does lead him to kill Badrang, but it gets many of his allies killed and causes Badrang to kill Rose which emotionally scars Martin so deeply that he leaves all of his friends and his potential life behind, presumably riddled with guilt.
    • Outcast of Redwall has this on full display. Swartt wants revenge on Sunflash for maiming his paw, Sunflash wants revenge on Swartt for holding him captive and mistreating him, neither of them can let it go for many, many seasons and are unable to lead normal lives, and a lot of creatures die because of it. Thankfully, Sunflash has Skarlath to be his conscience, preventing revenge from consuming him entirely and allowing him to remain decently well-adjusted; Swartt has no such figure, and as such becomes ruthless and unhinged in his quest for revenge, running an entire army into the ground and ruining the lives of everyone around him.
  • Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves:
    • Sela tries to sell Cluny's battle plan to the Abbey-dwellers in Redwall. An unimpressed Constance just knocks her oout and takes them, leaving Sela to face Cluny's nonexistant mercy.
    • Damug Warfang drowns some traitors in The Long Patrol.
    • Badrang in Martin the Warrior does this.
    • Subverted by Tsarmina in Mossflower, who states that not invoking this trope is the only reward for defecting to her side.
    • A spy in The Bellmaker is warned about this by Urgan Nagru, the Big Bad, after he offers information on Nagru's mate (they're constantly plotting against each other) after the rat suggests a reward would be in order. He's then happy to escape with his life.
      "Life is the highest reward of all, my friend. Double dealers and traitors often receive death as their payment. But I will spare you for your treachery to me and my queen. Your reward is that I allow you to live."
    • As far as goodbeast species traitors, Skan the shrew in Mattimeo was put in Slagar's slave line as reward for his treachery, and soon after killed by the Painted Ones.
  • Riddle Me This: Riddles play a huge role in most of the books, assisting the protagonists in a specific mission.
    • Redwall's set reveals the location of Martin's shield, scabbard, and sword (though the sword was taken at the time), and Matthias' role as the next warrior. His name scrambled into an anagram "I AM THAT IS"
    • Mattimeo's assisted in Mattias' and his friends in rescuing their children, including the titular character that is his son.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
    • Swartt Sixclaw, as his sole motivation in the entire book for stalking Sunflash was to kill him for maiming his infamous six-clawed paw.
    • The slaves in Martin the Warrior - they all escape, but they attack Marshank anyway to pay back Badrang and make sure he doesn't enslave anyone else.
  • Roc Birds: While not called a roc, the Wild King MacPhearsome (an eagle) fits the image, what with the otter protagonist being the size of his leg. He guards the Flower from the Mountaintop, and actually flies the otter back to Redwall Abbey in time to save everyone from a plague.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size:
    • Damug Warfang is a "Greatrat", twice the size of a normal rat.
    • Cluny the Scourge is described as "the largest rat the Redwallers had seen."
    • Also, some fanon suggests that—to solve issues with scale and such—most of the animals are human-sized or thereabouts and objects are scaled to in a similar manner, with badgers and such things being around ten feet tall (though this doesn't apply to the first book, due to Early-Installment Weirdness.) Other theories scale up the smaller animals, like mice and moles, to place them on more equal footing with their larger neighbors while still maintaining things like owls and snakes as genuine threats.
  • Roguish Romani: Foxes are the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Romani. Mixing both fox and Roma stereotypes, they're sly and manipulative thieves associated with fortune-telling.
  • Rolling Attack: Mattimeo had a pair of hedgehogs locking together into a single spiked ball, then rolling around to attack enemies. Incidentally, this book was released two years before the first Sonic the Hedgehog game came out.
  • Rousing Lullaby: Loamhedge has a variation. Flinky sings "Vermin Lullaby," a mostly standard lullaby, to Badredd, a Bratty Half-Pint villain in the team. When Badredd is asleep, Flinky sings the lullaby again, but this time to no one in particular. In this version, the lyrics are altered to be about how Flinky hates Badredd so much that he wishes Badredd would die in his sleep and have his corpse eaten by ants and flies.
  • Rule of Cool: Salamandastron is a hollowed out volcano fortress ruled by berserker and often seer badgers all of whom Took A Level In Bad Ass with a standing army of posh hares whose job primarily consists of stopping Pirates and Mook Hordes from taking over the world! and they have a catchphrase: Eulaliaaaa!
  • Running Gag:
    • Tutty from Outcast sure does love to threaten to cut somebeast's tail off.
    • Aunt Blench's shawl in Lord Brocktree. Dotti was to give it to her upon arriving at Salamandastron, yet throughout her journey there, it gradually becomes more and more destroyed. (Shredded, patched, torn, tattered, soaked with cider, and inexpertly repaired.) Heck, the third part's alternative title is called "A shawl for Aunt Blench".
      • It eventually does get to to her, which leads to an equally funny and heartwarming moment where she actually wears it.
    • Grood's frequent (and evidently unprintable) swearing could also count.
  • Same Story, Different Names:
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • Having a bell intended for a Badger Lord around really does a job on Gabool's sanity, causing him to mistake (and kill) a captain for his traitorous Number Two Graypatch.
    • Abbot Durral briefly becomes delirious in Pearls of Lutra after being held captive for so long by pirates, watching Romsca die right beside him, and spending the rest of a sea voyage as a Sole Survivor on an empty ship.
  • Satanic Archetype: Cluny the Scourge is treated as such, and rightly so.
  • The Savage South: Both the Kingdom of Malkariss and the island of Sampetra are in the south.
  • Scarecrow Solution: In Mattimeo, Cornflower and some co-conspirators fake appearances by Martin's ghost to demoralize General Ironbeak's forces.
  • Scary Scorpions: Skrabblag, Gabool's giant (in proportion to the characters) black scorpion that acts as a pet/executioner.
  • Screaming Warrior: There's at least one in every book. Some examples:
    • "EULALIAAAAA!"
    • "MOSSFLOWERRRRRRRRRR!"
    • "LOGALOGALOGALOOOOOOG!"
    • "REDWAAAALLL!"
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Lousewort and Sneezewort, Fragorl, Ripfang, Greypatch, Wulpp, Ullig, Wilce, etc. Dingeye and Thura started a book's plotline by trying (and failing) to do this, whereas most characters who do this do so at the end.
    • Fragorl pulls what is probably the most impressive desertion in the series by taking around a third of Ungatt Trunn's massive army with her in the process. Said 300-strong army of deserters is promptly never mentioned again.
    • Ashleg leaves behind Tsarmina when he realizes that she is completely insane and will likely no longer listen to him. He leaves his cloak behind, which proves to be a Chekhov's Gun.
    • Mokkan (Marlfox), Tsarmina (Mossflower) Slagar (Mattimeo), Vizka Longtooth (Eulalia!), and Quean Vilaya (The Sable Quean) all try to cut and run as well. Unlike the first group (most of whom were either just doing their jobs or were more incompetent than genuinely cruel), these characters relished in evil and wickedness and shortly find that they cannot outrun death.
  • Sdrawkcab Name:
    • Ballaw poses as "Tibbar the magic rabbit".
    • Urgan Nagru made his name like this on purpose, so that his enemies would know he could come at them from all directions.
  • Sea Serpents: Being that of Redwall a world of Talking Animals, the role of sea serpent is taken up by smaller creatures, generally snakes or eels:
    • In Salamandastron, the Deepcoiler is a monstrous lake snake longer than three shrew logboats.
    • In Taggerung, Yo Karr is a huge cave eel worshiped by a tribe of pygmy shrews who regularly sacrifice one of their own to it so as to ensure a plentiful catch of migrating elvers. Tagg kills the monster to free the tribe.
    • In The Long Patrol, an unnamed yellow eel that lived in the well of Kotir Castle (on whose ruins Redwall was built) ends up fighting Skipper when he investigates a cave-in threatening the south wall. After a long subterranean battle, he and the eel's corpse are washed out in the river.
  • Seers: Although most other supernatural/mystical elements are left vague, rare, or revealed as a fraud, many characters really do have the ability to see the future to a certain extent. However, they usually only have vague glimpses which are often deceptive; for example, Nightshade knows she'll always serve Swartt, but doesn't know her service will end with her death.
  • Self-Poisoning Gambit: Both Lantur from Marlfox and Swartt Sixclaw from Outcasts of Redwall managed to trick opponents into drinking poison through using this.
    • Lantur tried to persuade her mother Silth that the wine Lantur was offering her was harmless by claiming that Lantur was going to drink some herself. Silth was too paranoid to fall for that, and a round of I Know You Know I Know and Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo followed. However later Lantur succeeds by drinking from one of the cups and pretending to die, at which Silth drinks from the other one... which is where the poison really was.
    • Swartt Sixclaw offers some wine and an ornate cup to a rival warlord. The other warlord has his Giant Mook drink some of the wine first with Swartt, which they both enjoy. The warlord then pours some wine into the cup, drinks, and dies the next day. Turns out it was the cup that was poisoned, not the wine. Swartt is even able to "prove" his innocence by drinking the rest of the wine to show it wasn't poisoned.
  • Semiaquatic Species Sailor:
    • The majority of otters are sailors or fishermen. The leaders are typically known as "skippers", a term usually referring to the captain of a boat or small ship.
    • In addition to the aforementioned otters there are also many ?Sea Rat? pirates (while rats are not generally found in water they are still excellent swimmers), and the Guosim shrews (who are basically a band of nomadic riverboat sailors) are probably supposed to be Eurasian Water Shrews.
    • Marlfox has the Riverhead tribe, made up of Irish-accented watervoles who keep a number of small boats and are shown to be good sailors. One of them (Burble) joins the heroes on the quest after the Riverheads unwittingly (and unwillingly) provide the heroes with a boat when Burble steals it (the heroes had traded a jewel for it, but Burble stole both from their selfish self-appointed leader before he could double-cross them).
  • Senseless Sacrifice: Averted and played straight with Bragoon and Saro. Sure, they committed a Heroic Sacrifice in order to save Horty, Springald and Fenna, but if you get past a moment of Fridge Brilliance, you'll realize they wouldn't have had to sacrifice themselves if they just stayed away from Loamhedge, since Martha wound up walking on her own.
  • Sequel Escalation: In the early books, the vermin armies keep getting bigger and the Big Bads' titles more impressive, up to "Emperor" Ublaz (whose domain was actually just an island). In both cases this process stopped when it couldn't go any further.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • In Taggerung, Sawney Rath has a nicer moment of genre savviness when he swears he won't be one of the many dead vermin lords who've attacked Redwall ...except that one of the names he drops is Ferahgo, who never went near Redwall. Then again, that took place the equivalent of several centuries earlier, and Sawney, being a vermin chieftain, would have been going off of oral legends, not the official chronicles of the Redwall recorders.
    • However, there is another one that's not so easily explained. In Mossflower, Bella the badger says that only male badgers make the journey to Salamandastron, but in Lord Brocktree, which chronologically took place before Mossflower, when Lord Brocktree is looking at some carvings of the previous badgers who had ruled Salamandastron, one of the names mentioned is Spearlady Gorse. On the other hand, Gorse may have come long enough ago that she simply wasn't recorded in Bella's books.
    • Barlom from Outcast of Redwall states that he is the grandson of Timballisto and wishes Martin had lived long enough for Barlom to meet him. The Legend of Luke states that Timballisto died shortly after the events shown in Mossflower, where Timballisto and Martin interacted on more than one occasion. Barlom says that he recalled sitting on his grandfather's knee though, making this impossible.
    • Dandin and later Bryony are both described as great-grandchildren of Gonff. This would make them either siblings or first cousins. Jacques later said that they were only "distantly" related though, as Bryony's story occurred earlier than Dandin's by chronology. Realistically, in either case this is hardly "distant". Bryony being an older first cousin of Dandin is probably the best bet for fans who want to ignore what Jacques said and go by the text (it's never said just how much earlier her story takes place after all, and this gives the timeline some greater leeway).
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
    • The hares, to the point that even other hares sometimes struggle to understand them.
      "So, what happens when the bally precipitation ceases?"
      "Precipitation ceases?"
      "Sorry, I mean what happens when the rain stops?"
    • In The Long Patrol, Perigord refers to leafy green treetops as "Arboreal Verdance". Rockjaw and Morio then wonder why he didn't just say that, the answer being "Why should he when he knows how to say words like arboreal verdance?"
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • The whole search for the pearls in The Pearls of Lutra.
    • Bragoon and Saro's quest to find something at Loamhedge that'll make Martha walk again. But Martha ends up walking anyway without their help so...subverted?
    • The search for the Doomwyte jewels in Doomwyte, which ended ironically for the very same reason as the pearls.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
    • Bryony's journey to find Veil Sixclaw ends with him dying right in front of her. Despite the fact he died for the sake of saving her, Bryony and all the other Redwallers just shrug it off, saying he was always evil to begin with. The readers, however, would disagree.
    • Martin and Rose's romance subplot in Martin the Warrior. Almost everyone knew it wouldn't end well (since the story chronologically takes place before Mossflower, which opens with Martin traveling alone), but it was still a huge Gut Punch when Rose was killed at the end of the book, thus making the subplot almost pointless and heartbreaking.
  • Shout-Out:
    • A possible one to Judge Dredd of all people: the self-proclaimed Warden of a marsh with a tendency to use the phrase "I AM THE LAAAAAAAAW!"
    • Joseph Bell was the name of the man who inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. Redwall has a literal bell named after its maker Joseph.
    • Swartt mocking Bowfleg as "Bowfleg the Old" and "Bowfleg the Glutton" after Nightshade calls him a great warlord is similar to the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Saruman similarly mocks Radagast.
    • The animated series has the otters walk around without clothing while everyone else is fully dressed. This is a possible reference to The Wind in the Willows, where the four main characters Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad were drawn anthropomorphic, but minor character Otter was drawn as a regular old otter.
    • Sparra charracter Bigwing. His name is one letter off from a character in a certain other xenofiction book about rabbits.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Luke the Warrior paraphrases Julius Caesar as he prepares to kill Vilu Daskar.
    Luke: Cowards die a thousand times. A warrior dies only once. You will die as you lived, a coward to the last!
  • Shown Their Work: In a moment of Fridge Brilliance you see why squirrels have bows and arrows but otters almost always use slings and javelins: slings and javelins still work when they are wet!
  • The Siege: The first book's main conflict revolves around Cluny's forces encamped in a siege of Redwall. Other books have this plotline but not as the main plot, like when General Ironbeak began his aerial siege of the abbey in Mattimeo.
  • Siege Engines: Since multiple books have sieges, these naturally come up. In the first book, Cluny uses a battering ram and a siege tower. Neither works, however; the ram gets captured and the tower is burned down by Cornflower.
  • Sissy Villain: Ublaz goes around sporting fancy robes, perfume, and nail polish, and his entire motivation is getting some pink pearls that he thought would look nice in his crown. No grand scheme of conquest, the entire reason he's a villain is because he wants to look prettier.
  • Slipping a Mickey: Done to the entire abbey in Mattimeo, Martin and his companions in Martin the Warrior, and quite unsettingly, to a boat full of rowdy children in Eulalia.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs: A couple of books have the traveling protagonists encounter rabbit families. The rabbits are arrogant, pretentious snobs and British Stuffiness stereotypes who look down their noses at the protagonists. The protagonists are usually annoyed by the adult rabbits' snobbishness and feel somewhat sorry for the rabbit children.
  • Smug Snake: Hoo boy, do we got a list for you...
    • Ublaz, again. He's possibly the most pathetic Big Bad the series ever had, spending almost the entire book under siege in his castle by his own rebellious pirate crews (constantly outfoxed by their leader Rasconza) before dying when he steps on his own pet snake.
    • Vilu Daskar too. He always acted as though he was the most intelligent creature around (which was true for the most part), and that everything was under his control.
    • Klitch, who tried too hard to be like his father and always smart-mouthed him whenever he could.
    • Zigu. He's an excellent swordsbeast, a Deadpan Snarker, and (arguably) the smartest bad guy in Outcast. Yet when he gets into a swordsfight with Sabretache and realize he's losing, he starts using dirty tactics and turns out to be nothing more than a Dirty Coward.
    • Mokkan is the most smug Marlfox out of his entire family, which is saying a lot.
    • Gruven. He makes all the vermin listed above look as tough as Cluny. Even Ublaz had the balls to at least get into a short sword fight with Martin.
    • Pitru is more or less a feline version of Klitch.
    • Tugga Bruster. Despite being one of the burliest shrews in the series (and, y'know, being a shrew) he's just as cowardly and despicable as the vermin. He can't even insult someone right.
    • Slagar the Cruel, albeit a high-functioning one, was one even as Chickenhound.
    • Badrang is VERY proud of being the lord of a very small territory.
  • Sociopathic Hero:
    • Folgrim (The Legend of Luke), though if you learn his backstory, you will see why.
    • Major Cuthbert Frunk from High Rhulain. His anti-vermin song was quite bloodthirsty.
  • Sole Survivor: Tramun Clogg is the last one left alive in Marshank. He always wanted to rule it, but true to poetic justice, it's destroyed and he's utterly insane, talking to corpses and likely to soon die of exposure.
    • Subverted in Salamandastron when Klitch survives the final battle and is in the middle of escaping, when he comes across some of the poisoned stores, thoughtlessly drinks some of it, and ends up dying anyway.
  • Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: Mostly averted, except for one thing... ermine and stoats are treated as two seperate species. An ermine is just a stoat in its winter coloration.
  • Sound Off: Several of the ever-present songs are marching or working tunes.
  • Spin Attack: The Guosim Windmill maneuver. A regiment of shrews work together to become a rotating shredder of death that cuts down an enemy horde pretty darn well.
  • Spoiler Cover: The back of Outcast of Redwall spoils Veil getting exiled from Redwall. This doesn't happen until the very end of Part 2 of the book (and the title helps give it away too).
  • Spoonerism: Baby Rollo picks up a slightly garbled version of a drinking song, and declares his intention to "fight a flagon and drink a dragon".
  • Sssssnaketalk: Sssssnakes and, in Pearls of Lutra, monitor lizardzzz.
  • The Starscream: The Horde leaders generally have one per horde. Ex: Cheesethief to Cluny, Zigu to Swartt, Antigra to Sawney Rath (she succeeds, but then gets killed when she tries to do it again to the new leader), and Zwilt the Shade to Quean Vilaya.
    • Klingon Promotion is standard operating procedure on Terramort. The Searat King defends his title with his own blade until meets a superior fighter and is slain. Said superior fighter becomes King. Greypatch is especially notable as he succeeded and split off from Gabool, making himself another Big Bad.
  • Start of Darkness: Slagar The Cruel was once known as Chickenhound, up to the point where Asmodeus bit him and disfigured his face.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: High Rhulain both subverts this and plays it straight. Tiria is barred from becoming Skipper on account of her sex, and her choice to wield a sling draws derision from male characters — all of whom wind up eating their words. On the other hand, many of those same male characters also hand-hold her through her quest, treating her attempts to make her own decisions with condescending amusement. When she insists on accompanying her warriors to battle, Kolun outright compares her to his bossy wife. Odd, given that The Legend of Luke had a female otter as "Queen of NORT (the Northern Otter River Tribes)." Maybe Skipper is an inherently male title, with the ladies able to become Otter Queens?
  • Stock Medieval Meal: Mostly averted. Though the simpler staple foods will be mentioned, especially eaten by travelers on the road, the author would usually go into mouth-watering elaborate detail about what's served at the feasts (which are frequent). It's to the point there's a cookbook with recipes of the dishes mentioned in the series.
  • Stock Ness Monster: The Deepcoiler in Salamandastron and the Slothunog in High Rhulain both qualify. The latter in particular, because while the Deepcoiler is described as simply a very big snake, the Slothunog is implied to be a surviving plesiosaur.
  • Straight for the Commander:
    • In the first Redwall novel, Constance the badger tries to end the siege of Redwall Abbey by sniping enemy commander Cluny the Scourge. It fails due to a rather accidental Decoy Leader situation. Later on, when Cluny falls in battle, the enemy army falls into disarray, and many of the invaders surrender immediately.
    • The Bloodwrath causes the afflicted creature to see only their hated enemy, causing this trope with a side of Foe-Tossing Charge since every creature between the two might as well not be there.
  • Strictly Formula: There are basically four Redwall plots: the siege, the kidnapping, the land quest, and the sea/river quest. And then there's the "solve the puzzle/rhyme/prophecy." All with lots and lots of Food Porn. Subverted in the last book; only one relatively minor prophecy, no great siege and no sea quest.
  • Success Through Insanity: In High Rhulain, the hare Major Cuthbert went insane after his daughter was killed by vermin. Not only did this not hinder his effectiveness as a soldier one bit (in fact, one of his split personalities being an otter pirate might actually be the reason he knows how to sail), he ended up killing a sea monster singlehandedly.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
    • Friar Hugo is killed off early on in Mattimeo. Later on, Log-a-Log also bites the dust. For many fans though, the saddest one in the book is the death of Warbeak, an incredibly fleshed-out character with strong development in Redwall.
    • Nutwing from The Long Patrol ended up as a Sacrificial Lamb in Marlfox.
    • Mother Mellus from Mariel of Redwall ends up killed in The Bellmaker, though her death brings about a Heel–Face Turn and among the best Moment of Awesome in the series.
    • Lady Cregga Rose Eyes double subverts this trope. She survived her first sequel, but then she took an arrow to the chest after coming back for a second.
  • Suffer the Slings: Shrews and otters use slings in combat which are often deadly and effective on the enemy.
  • Suicide Attack: While faced with overwhelming odds, both Luke the Warrior and the badger lord of Salamandastron Stonepaw pull one of these on their enemies, doubling as Taking You with Me.
  • Sundial Waypoint: Common in riddles in the series, such as in Mattimeo when the entrance to an underground city is located by following the shadow of a pine tree.
  • Super Drowning Skills: King Agarnu died simply because he couldn't swim and because his fat body weighed him down when he was pushed into a lake. Apparently, no one ever told him fat floats.
  • Supreme Chef: Most Redwallers, small woodland families, Beau (although that may just be in comparison to the rest of the crew), and the hares of Salamandastron. They can bake cakes that are as delicious as they're described, and everybody seems to enjoy the food they cook.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: The Armies of most Big Bads consist of hundreds of complete morons who ignore obvious clues and frequently want to take command too.
    • Lampshaded in the very first book: Cluny The Scourge ponders the fact that his underlings generally are dumb as bricks and decides that their inability to think for themselves (and resulting obedience) outweighs their incompetence.
    • In the animated series, Badrang screams this from the wall of his fortress after another failure. His minions are indeed phenomenally stupid; the dumbest in the whole show.
      Badrang: FOOLS! I'm surrounded by FOOLS!
  • Swans A-Swimming: The series accurately portrays swans as dangerous and highly protective of their nests.
  • Sweet Seal: A few seals and sea lions appear in the series, and they're Always Lawful Good.
  • Take That!: Rabbits seem to be an extended Take That! against British Stuffiness and class snobbery. They're depicted as prissy, cowardly Upper Class Twits who look down their noses at other woodlanders. Notably, the single worst insult you can give a hare is to call them a rabbit.
  • Taking You with Me: Lord Stonepaw, Lord Urthstripe, Luke the Warrior. Cregga Roseyes subverts this, as she doesn't die. She lasts two more books, and in the second one almost to the end.
  • Talking to the Dead: There are a few moments where a character near death speaks to someone they know at the gates of Dark Forest, such as Martin in Mossflower and Sunflash in Outcast of Redwall.
  • Talking Animal: Every character.
  • Tattoo Sharpie: In Lord Brocktree, the Blue Hordes of Ungatt Trunn get their names from the fact that they are made to wash in permanent blue dye on the day they're inducted, showing that they belong to Trunn permanently. Over the course of the book, the vermin discover that walking while up to their necks in seawater for several hours will wash out the dye, leaving only their heads blue (and marking yet another symbolic victory against Trunn, who by that point is holed up in Salamandastron without food and with an increasingly unruly and hungry army).
  • Terrible Ticking: Tsarmina hears water running constantly. It's real, as the heroes are diverting a nearby river beneath her castle. Her minions just don't want to go down there and check as they're lazy and the basement is creepy.
  • Theme Naming:
    • Most of the mice in the original novel had names beginning with "M".
    • A lot of female mice in subsequent novels have been named after flowers.
    • In Salamandastron, all of the badgers save one have names beginning with Urth-
    • Several badgers have "stripe" in their names.
    • The squirrel warriors. "Reguba" is a common bloodline, and last name.
    • Many Big Bads have names like "Vermin-Name the Menacing-Word" (e.g. Cluny the Scourge, Gulo the Savage), "Vermin-Name Adjective-Trait" (Swartt Sixclaw, Tsarmina Greeneyes), and "Two-syllables one-syllable" (Ruggan Bor, Ungatt Trunn).
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: This is part of Bryony's defense of Veil in Outcast of Redwall — everyone has been treating him like a vermin his whole life, so of course he's acting like one.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Do NOT fuck with badgers, especially Lonna Bowstripe. He uses Raga Bol's body as a shield, and he's promptly impaled by a few spears. Afterwards, Lonna uses Raga's carcass as a flail to kill the other Searats. And then he chucks his grotesque body at a tree.
  • They Call Him "Sword":
    • Sunflash the Mace from Outcast.
    • Orlando the Axe from Mattimeo.
    • Cluny the Scourge is partly named for his whip-like tail.
    • Mariel Gullwhacker took her last name from the knotted rope she uses as a weapon, as gulls were her first adversary.
  • Those Two Guys: Sneezewort and Lousewort, a Bumbling Henchmen Duo that are so ineffectual as villains, they can't be seen as a true menace.
  • Through a Face Full of Fur: The Redwall critters are constantly turning red from rage, green from seasickness, white with fury or fright, and pink with pleasure.
  • Throwing Off the Disability: One book has a hare in a wheelchair suddenly regain her ability to walk and spend every night dancing. It's justified by the fact that the disability was heavily implied to be psychosomatic in the first place.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: In Mattimeo, Log-a-log slays Stonefleck with a sword throw.
  • Thunderbolt Iron: The Sword of Martin the Warrior was forged from metal taken from a "falling star" (meteorite).
  • Tome of Prophecy: A cavern hidden behind a boulder in the mountain of Salamandastron has images foretelling the future. Boar the Fighter shows it to Martin the Warrior in Mossflower - Martin and his companions are on it - and Boar explains that he does not know who put it there. The carvings also foretell Boar's death.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Ungatt Trunn, the Big Bad of Lord Brocktree. He has the single biggest army in the series, and he attempts to feed them by sending out only a few small foraging parties — with predictable results.
    • Ovus and Bluddbeak, two very old birds — one of whom is borderline blind — try to kill a trio of adders. By themselves. Guess who dies?
    • During her Villainous Breakdown, Lady Kaltag makes a fire inside her husband's fortress just to burn Leatho Shellhound out of the room he's hiding in. Although it's only briefly mentioned, her clothing catches on fire, and she ends up burning the whole fortress down (with her presumably still in it). Idiot.
    • Gruntan Kurdly. Apparently he didn't realize that a swan's nest full of swan eggs might also have a swan in it. Swans in this setting are huge compared to the typical critter, and very territorial.
    • Scratch, Splitnose, and Blacktooth takes this even further. They also find a swan's nest with an egg, they notice the swan. What do they do? Try to scare it off by throwing weapons at it. Scratch then goes right up to it in an attempt to stab it. Too bad its mate was also in the water.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • Matthias, occurring literally as he gets his hands on Martin's sword. All of a sudden, he has the strength, stamina, and fighting experience to go toe-to-toe with Cluny, a powerful and experienced rat warlord.
    • Viola from Pearls of Lutra. She starts out being nothing more than a tattletale vole, and she's easily frightened by the monitor lizards after she's captured by Lask's forces. But after she's rescued, she willingly joins Martin and his crew to go find Abbot Durral (who was still held captive by the corsairs), and she was more than happy to bonk a few vermin heads with an oar when several pirates tried to retake the Freebooter.
    • Dann too. He spends the first part of Marlfox being a "disappointment" to his father, and he even calls himself a coward when he and Song run away from Raventail (who had captured Dippler and Burble). He immediately decides to rescue his two friends, and when he encounters Raventail a second time, he beats the shit out of him. From that moment on his badassery just got better and better.
    • Martha and Horty Braebuck from Loamhedge. They're quite possibly the only two non-warrior Redwallers to do this without touching Martin's sword.
    • Spectacularly subverted in The Rogue Crew with Uggo Wiltud. At the end of the story, Uggo is granted the Sword of Martin, and you'd expect him to become an Instant Expert. Instead, he's just a nervous, scared hedgehog who can barely wield the sword. When he finally encounters Razzid Wearat and Badtooth, he kills Badtooth completely by mistake, his carcass falls on Uggo, and the sword is knocked away. If it hadn't been for Posy picking up the sword and impaling Razzid, the wearat would've killed Uggo.
    • In The Sable Quean, Clarrina is just a simple haremother/widow, but she ends up killing Zwilt the Shade in revenge for her husband's murder with Martin's sword no less.
    • Cynthia Bankvole through entire story of Mattimeo does nothing but whine and complain (which is understandable, suddenly being taken from your comfy home and family into a life of slavery), but in the animated series, during the final battle, she joins in trying to kick ass.
    Mattimeo: Cynthia? What happened to you?
    Cynthia: I got angry.
    • Arven from The Pearls of Lutra was a cheeky, bratty and mischievous toddler. In The Long Patrol, at some point once he became an adult (Or maybe even earlier) he was badass enough to earn the title Warrior of Redwall.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: For the otters, it's hotroot soup. For the moles, it's Deeper-N'-Ever-Turnip-N'-Tater-N'-Beetroot-Pie. For seafaring beasts (good and bad alike), it's Skilly n' Duff. For the hares, it's pretty much anything. For Matthias and Groot, it's candied nuts.
  • Training the Peaceful Villagers: Nearly every time Redwall proper is threatened, starting in the first book.
  • Tribal Face Paint: In Taggerung, all the Juska clans have tattoos to signify which clan they are from. Tagg has an extra one on his cheek to signify that he is an unusual creature.
  • Trilogy Creep: Initially, Redwall, Mossflower, and Mattimeo were marketed as a trilogy.
  • Trrrilling Rrrs: Wrrrrraith.
  • Tuckerization:
    • Two fans named Samantha Kim and Laura were featured - with slight modifications - as "Samkim" and "Arula" in Salamandastron. Oddly enough, the character Samkim is a boy.
    • Gauchee in Martin the Warrior is named for Patricia Lee Gauch, an editor of the books and friend of Brian Jacques, to whom the book is also dedicated.
    • Rab Streambattle in The Bellmaker was named for an enthusiastic Oregonian Redwall fan named Robert Adam Banagale.
    • Loamhedge features two characters named after people that Jacques mentions in the dedication: Lonna Bowstripe is named after a person named Nolan Wallace, and Martha Braebuck is inspired by Brian Jacques' friend Martha Buckley.
    • Tiria Wildlough from High Rhulain is based on a fan named Patricia who met Brian Jacques at a book signing in 2003 and gave him a letter requesting that he name an otter character after her.
    • Sampetra Isle, was named after two fans "Sam and Petra".
    • Axtel Sturnclaw, who appears in The Sable Quean, seems to have been named after US soldier Pfc. Donald Reas Axtell III, to whom Doomwyte is dedicated.
  • Tunnel King: The moles are expert diggers and often keep their ears and nose to the ground. Literally.
  • Two-Faced: Slagar the Cruel of Mattimeo, under his mask.
  • Two Lines, No Waiting: Along with the usual reasons, this structure takes advantage of previous supporting cast (such as the Guosim shrews or the hares and badgers of Salamandstron) while still allowing for a new and unique party of adventurers to explore a new setting.

    Tropes U-Z 

  • Unaffected by Spice: In Salamandastron , the meek old mouse Hollyberry watches two otters have a hotroot Eating Contest that ends with a full sack of pepper in the soup and both of them in tears, then nonchalantly finishes their bowls and comments that it could be spicier.
  • Uncertain Doom: Despite Word of God saying that Ripfang from Lord Brocktree (who pulled a Karma Houdini) is not the same Ripfang from Mossflower (who ended up getting crushed to death by Boar the Fighter), a lot of fans still believe otherwise (since the events in Lord Brocktree happen before Mossflower, not to mention that they're both searats). Even the Redwall Wiki thoroughly explains why both of them may be the same character.
  • Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Most of the rank-and-file vermin, though a lot of the Big Bad characters avert it.
    • This is addressed in Loamhedge when Badredd gets garbage dumped on him and he takes a bath (his last one being last Spring): "Every vermin knows that bathin' weakens ye."
  • Undefeatable Little Village: Despite being home to peace-loving creatures, many of them who aren't destined warriors are likely to become Technical or Martial Pacifists, driving away enemies for the most part or killing them as an absolute last resort. Because of this, Redwall itself is rarely defeated by the villain, and when it is, it doesn't last for long.
  • Underdogs Never Lose: The good guys just about never have the numbers advantage and always win anyway because Right Makes Might. It helps that the vermin will happily betray each other and flee at the first chance.
  • Underhanded Hero: Characters' morality is pretty much determined by their species, so while heroic species like otters and mice can be thieves and pirates, they only target vermin.
  • The Unfavorite: Veil, to the Abbeydwellers. He's looked down upon and treated as a criminal even when there's no evidence that he's done anything wrong. He complains that they never gave him a chance.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: A lot of major villains, thanks to running on It's All About Me, exhibit utter lack of gratitude or obligation to those who just helped them. Vilaya is probably the biggest example, killing a Mook who saved her life and still was on her side more or less just because said Mook refused to grovel before her.
  • Uniqueness Value: Whatever the species of the book's Big Bad, it's a given there'll be very few others of that species (sometimes gaining Elite Mook status). Rakkety Tam, The Sable Quean, and Mattimeo in particular have Big Bads belonging to species that do not appear anywhere else in the series, and Marlfox and Triss have main villains belonging to unique offshoots of common species.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Honestly, with quite a number of books framed as a retelling, of a retelling of a retelling of a story that happened long before their narrator's lifetime, one has to wonder how reliably events are conveyed to us. But a straight and definite example ironically is Martin the Warrior himself - in Mossflower he lies outright about events of his youth we learn from later books.
    • It would be revealed in Martin the Warrior that he made a vow to keep Rose's home a secret.
  • Unstoppable Rage: The Bloodwrath, a temporary mental condition where the person who has it flies into a rage beyond anything and throws away all reason as they violently attack anyone in their way with Glowing Eyes of Doom, whether they be friend or foe (supposedly — there's yet to be anyone killing allies while under the Bloodwrath). Usually badgers are the ones who go through these in books, although some non-badgers also exhibit the Bloodwrath.
  • Unwanted Spouse: Poor Bluefen. Tradition decreed that she would become the wife of the new warlord Swartt, who didn't expect or particularly want her. He never cared for her or even really paid attention to her, and didn't feel any grief upon her death.
  • Verbal Tic:
    • Those bally hares, wot wot? In this case it's also a "question tag". Like most of their dialect it's based on some of the posher Stock British Phrases.
    • Asmodeus has the habit of hissing his own name between sentences, and the bats repeat the last couple of words of every sentence, every sentence ...
    • Also, moles will say "ho urr", "burr aye", or something similar every few sentences.
    • Many birds make random screeches and squawks before and/or after sentences.
    • Rockjaw Grang tends to say "sithee" a lot.
    • When doesn't Lousewort start a sentence with "er"?
    • Tutty Pollspike has a habit of starting her sentences by shouting out "X 'n' X!"
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Outcast. Now they subliminaly introduced the dominant genetics of polydactyly? What?
  • Villain Decay:
    • Korvus Skurr. At the start of Doomwyte, he actually comes across as a competent and frightening Big Bad. But as the novel progresses, he slowly starts to lose control over his own army (due to his reckless decision to hire a blind adder as an instrument for fear against the Redwallers), and eventually he devolves into a Smug Snake.
    • Vizka Longtooth. His decay started shortly after his brother Codj was killed by Gorath. As time passed, he slowly began to lose control over his crew, all his plans to conquer Redwall failed thanks to the Brownrats, and many of the Sea Raiders were getting killed left and right. By the end of Eulalia!, Vizka's crew is down to only four, and they all desert him after Vizka killed two of his Raiders simply because they annoyed him.
    • Gruntan Kurdly as well. He already started out as a lazy leader of a group of rats who were only there to make Maudie's subplot more exciting. By the time Part 3 of Eulalia! came, Gruntan did nothing but obsess over hard-boiled eggs, and he turned into the laziest antagonist in the entire book, if not the whole series. And if that's not bad enough, he dies trying to acquire a swan egg.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Several examples.
    • Gabool the Wild in Mariel of Redwall does it most obviously and impressively. He goes from being evil but reasonably lucid to a gibbering insomniac who can't tell his followers from his sworn enemies and starts to believe that a plundered bell understands what he's saying and rings itself to mock him.
    • Slagar the Cruel in Mattimeo is already crazy at the start, blaming Matthias and the Redwallers for the horrible scarring on his face. By the end, he's pretty much raving, frantically reassuring himself that however events turn out, he will "win" somehow. He even plans to steal Matthias' sword, now convinced that it is magic and grants victory to whoever wields it.
    • Gulo starts out as being creepy, scary, and menacing, but after he survives falling down the waterfall, he becomes Ax-Crazy, starts Laughing Mad, rambles about his dead brother and talks to himself—and inanimate objects, making him even scarier and creepier. Needless to say, his soldiers were scared out of their wits of him.
    • Tsarmina in Mossflower also does this. Granted she's being driven insane by a constant dripping noise and the fact that every one of her attempts to destroy the resistance has failed.
    • Cap'n Clogg's really the only character who had a justified reason for his breakdown. After all, he did suffer a head injury. (Though who KNOWS what happened when Gulo fell down the waterfall - he could have hit his head as well.)
    • Justified with Baliss, too, who was already blind and not-so-sane to begin with. After he gets a bunch of hedgehog spikes in his head, he spends the rest of the novel literally losing his mind and thrashing around killing anything in sight and trying to soothe his wounds.
  • Villainous Face Hold: Emperor Ublaz does this to captives (and mooks), as he has a hypnotic gaze that works on birds and reptiles.
  • Villainous Glutton: Many vermin. In fact, there's even a scene where some vermin can't help but over-stuff themselves at a Redwall feast, despite crying and moaning about how sick they feel.
  • Villain Song:
    • The Bellmaker: Urgan Nagru has a song that he has his bard sing.
    • The Pearls Of Lutra: Romsca's Badass Boast.
    • Triss: The Freebooters have three.
    • And Flinky in Loamhedge has about six songs.
  • Violence Really Is the Answer: Ultimately each book's conflict is resolved by waging war against the villain and defeating them in battle.
  • The Voiceless:
    • Silent Sam is a squirrel who is too young to speak and is instead depicted constantly sucking his paw. The epilogue of Redwall mentions him starting to talk, losing his "Silent" nickname and this trope.
    • Farran from Salamandastron is a creepy, silent poisoner that never speaks.
    • Muta from The Bellmaker is a badger that is unable to speak; the most she can do is make some bark-like noises when happy or distressed. In the same book, Rab Streambattle becomes this for a while when badly injured and healed by Egbert the Scholar; Egbert acknowledges that Rab's mind is not healed, and it takes reuniting with his wife for Rab to snap out of it and become able to speak again.
  • Wacky Wayside Tribe: Used constantly. The Legend of Luke would only be one-third the length without it.
    • The Flitchaye could certainly count for this in Mariel of Redwall. They aren't mentioned again until near the end of the book, where it mentions that the scattered survivors of Greypatch's pirate crew were fleeing towards Flitchaye territory, with the implication that it would be the end of them. They also appear in Sable Quean.
    • The Gawtrybe in Martin the Warrior are a tribe of Psychopathic Manchild squirrels that view violence as fun.
    • Used again in Doomwyte with the Gonflins, a literal tribe of thieves and robbers.
  • Wandering Culture: The Guosim are a tribe of argumentative warrior shrews who roam the waterways of Mossflower Woods in logboats and frequently give aid to the protagonists on their quests and in defence of Redwall Abbey.
  • Waif-Fu: Mariel is a small, young mouse, but she's a fighter, and once she creates her weapon the "Gullwhacker", she can defeat enemies much larger than herself.
  • War Is Hell: For a children's series, Redwall doesn't hold many punches. In the first book, at the end of the first battle with Cluny's horde, mention is made of the price of the battle — freshly dug graves and a filled infirmary.
  • The Warlord: Most villains are animal warlords who lead roving hordes of bandits and barbarians by brute force and cunning or set themselves up as the unquestioned tyrants of petty kingdoms.
  • Warning Song: Loamhedge has the Affably Evil stoat Flinky sing a song called "Heads Down" (the audiobook version can be heard here) in which he warns his cohorts to hide during a battle instead of fighting, arguing that fighting is foolish and will certainly get them killed.
    When the clouds of arrows fly, keep your heads down
    Let the brave ones charge on by, keep your heads down
    When the hero's blood runs red, and you're scared to raise your head
    Just be glad that you ain't dead, and keep your heads down.
  • Weapons Breaking Weapons: Multiple wielders of the Sword of Martin the Warrior use it to break enemies' weapons, such as when Triss cut Kurda's sabre in half and she turned and ran and fell on her own broken blade.
  • Weapons Kitchen Sink: One of the major examples in children's fiction. Let's see, finely crafted light fencing rapiers? Pattern-welded meteoric iron broadswords? Giant axes? Tree trunks!? Just running at your enemy with teeth and claws!?!?!
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: It isn't uncommon for minor characters to die abruptly, but Asio Bardwing didn't get the chance to even start his Character Development before he died.
  • Welcoming Song:
    • The novel Taggerung has a song about welcoming a son home. Here it is sung in the audiobook.
    • In Outcast of Redwall, the Redwallers sing "Home Returning" to welcome their friends back home as they see them returning up the path.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Gulo of all people. In his final Motive Rant he yells that his father will finally see his favorite son killed by the one he never paid attention to.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • What happened to Sneezewort and Lousewort? After they ditch the Rapscallions, they're only mentioned one more time in The Long Patrol. After that it seemed like even the author forgot about them.
    • What happened to Tazzin and Scummy? Were they killed by Triss, Sagax, and their army of Redwallers, or did they escape to safety?
    • They never did mention what happened to Weilmark Scaut...
    • Lord Brocktree suffers a case of this when one of the enemy commanders decides to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and deserts with around 300 of his troops in tow. Said contingent of fully armed, trained vermin marches away and right out of the plot, never to appear again.
    • The kingdom that Rakkety Tam served was said to be menaced constantly by vermin. However, when Tamm — who was arguably the only thing keeping them away — leaves, nobody ever mentions it again.
    • What about the twelve guards that were guarding the Vole family in Cluny's camp? After Matthias rescued the voles, the guards as punishment were imprisoned without food and water until further notice. Never mentioned again... either when Cluny recovered he personally executed them, which was implied he would have done in the first place, they were pardoned, or they starved to death.
    • What on earth happened to Binta the fox who had ran off after Fibbler killed her mate Thwip? Is she alive or dead? Did she die offscreen from the injures Fibbler gave her? Is she in hiding grieving over Thwip? Is she trying to tend her wounds? Did some other beast kill her offscreen? She just runs off and is never mentioned again!
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: Even the ones with names almost invariably die.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Toran borderline verbally abuses Martha after she learns how to walk, all because she was upset that Bragoon and Saro went to Loamhedge for no reason.
    • Rusvul Reguba gets one in Marlfox, from his best friend Janglur Swifteye. It's a very well-deserved one as well, because just before it Rusvul had screamed at his own son, who wants nothing more than to please him, over something that Dann had no control over and couldn't have even stopped. Rusvul even went so far as to say that it would have been better that he'd died than have to come back into the abbey and see Dann having been knocked unconscious by vermin. Janglur's speech actually makes Rusvul apologetic, but it takes Dann running off without telling anyone and being gone for weeks, for Rusvul to be able to apologize to him.
  • Whip of Dominance: Cluny is a cruel slaver who uses his own tail as a whip against slaves in Redwall and attaches a poisoned barb to the tip so he can use it as a lethal weapon. Not to mention the numerous slavedrivers who wield whips, notably Bullflay, whose name even seems to reflect his weapon of choice.
  • Wicked Weasel: Pretty much any mustelid that isn't an otter is going to be evil.
  • Wig, Dress, Accent: See Dressing as the Enemy. Jukka the Sling, a squirrel, passes for a rat by shaving her tail.
  • The World Is Always Doomed: Just how many times has the abbey been attacked now?
    • Subverted in Taggerung, where the leader of the Juska tribe wants to avoid Redwall at all costs.
    • Averted in some of the earlier books, with a literal aversion in Outcast of Redwall.
    • Also, given that most books introduce a whole new cast of characters, it is likely that the Abbey gets attacked about once a generation, probably less.
  • World of Badass Adorable
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • Vilaya actually does. And she doesn't just hurt a child, she kills one.
    • Slagar The Cruel. He has several children from Redwall kidnapped to be sold into slavery, at least one of whom was killed when they couldn't keep up, and he abuses them along with his own guards if they fail him. And one of his last acts before his death is the pointless murder of Vitch.
    • A far more innocuous example, but the shrews in Eulalia! are implied to simply drug their children whenever they misbehave.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: So Martin's gathered up thousands of warriors, Marshank is slowly being overrun, Badrang is running away from his fortress in shame, and the Fur and Freedom Fighters have been saved. And after Badrang's gone, Martin and Rose will surely fall in love and live a peaceful life. What could possibly go wrong? ...Cue Badrang abruptly killing Rose.
  • Yes-Man: In Mossflower, Tsarmina complains about Brogg being this to her. This doesn't stop her from keeping him a position of power, nevertheless (granted, by then everyone above him has either died or deserted and he at least has some shred of competence).
    Tsarmina: Yes, jellybrains. You and Ratflank take them one by one to the cells.
    Brogg: Yes, Milady.
    Tsarmina: Will you stop interrupting me and listen! All anyone ever says around here is "yes, Milady" or "no, Milady".
    Brogg: Yes, Milady.
    Tsarmina: Shut up!
  • You Dirty Rat!: The vast majority of rats are presented in the franchise as villainous vermin.
  • You Don't Want to Catch This: Keyla helps Martin and some other slaves escape from Marshank this way in Martin the Warrior.
  • You Fight Like a Cow: Hares have a tendency to snark at their opponents when duelling. Also, the fight between Dippler and Fenno:
    "I'll kill you just like I killed Log-a-log!"
    "You can't. I'm facin' you, Fenno, you stabbed Log-a-log in the back!"
  • You Have Failed Me: The villains in the Redwall series sure do have a habit of killing their own henchmen....
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Same as above, although not as egregious. Even if you do everything the Big Bad says, he or she will still kill you if you're of no value anymore. Just ask Gliv.
  • You Need a Breath Mint:
    • If somebeast is eating or has just eaten wild ramson/garlic, do not be surprised if another beast comments about his or her breath.
    • Special mention goes to Lask Frildur and his monitor lizards. Throughout The Pearls of Lutra, the author mentions multiple times that they all have foul breath. Ublaz had to turn away from Lask in the very first scene they were in just because it smelled so bad.
  • You No Take Candle: Sparrows and some of the more uncivilized vermin.
  • Your Mom: Tarquin insults a seagull by claiming its mother was a cuckoo. Given the reproductive habits of cuckoos, this is likely the equivalent of calling someone a bastard.
  • You Shall Not Pass!:
    • Rockjaw Grang in The Long Patrol dies fighting the Rapscallion horde to buy time for his allies to escape.
    • Subverted in Mattimeo. Matthias attempts to do this, but his allies refuse to actually leave him behind.
    • Bragoon and Saro in Loamhedge.
    • Jukka the Sling and Fleetscut in Lord Brocktree, which is even more impressive, considering they spent most of the book viciously insulting each other, and nearly coming to blows more than once.


"Weapons may be carried by creatures who are evil, dishonest, violent or lazy. The true warrior is good, gentle and honest. His bravery comes from within himself; he learns to conquer his own fears and misdeeds."


Alternative Title(s): Salamandastron, Mossflower, Mariel Of Redwall, Martin The Warrior, The Bellmaker, Outcast Of Redwall, The Pearls Of Lutra, The Long Patrol, Marlfox, The Legend Of Luke, Lord Brocktree, Triss, Loamhedge, The Taggerung, Rakkety Tam, High Rhulain, Eulalia, Doomwyte, The Sable Quean, The Rogue Crew

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