The Mystery of Wolves

[sunflashtheace]

the wolves are the biggest animals in redwall. ed of discussion

[The Skarzs]

Lol. That works.

[Ashleg]

Look at all the official media of Urgan Nagru.

[Steelinghades]

The scaling of creatures in redwall has always been rather wonky, if we were going by more realistic sizes then the biggest creatures--note I'm specifically talking about height not bulk--should be as follows:

Wolverine: 65–107 cm length, 30-45 cm and 5.5–25 kg weight
Badger: 60–90 cm length, 25–30 cm height and 15–17 kg weight
Red Fox: 45–90 cm length, 35–50 cm height and 2.2–14 kg

and just for fun, here's the Giant Otter:
Giant Otter: 1.5-1.7 m length and 26-32 kg weight (They're about the size of alligators)


Interestingly enough, the largest creatures in redwall wouldn't be a very clear cut winner. Wolverines have the longest length and weight, whereas foxes have the greatest height at the shoulder, If you were taking these numbers and transplanting them to redwall, they'd actually all be pretty similar in height, with the foxes having occasional smaller members and the wolverines having the largest.

Then we come to the next bit of the equation, bulk. Foxes tend to be rather spry creatures, they don't have a lot of mass, compared to badgers and wolverines the foxes are puny in the mass category. Although you'll notice that wolverine weight can also go below ten kilos, meaning they--like foxes--would have a greater range of sizes, whereas badgers are pretty consistent with their sizes.

But wait, Steelinghades! I hear you cry, what does that have to do with wolves? Well not much, I generally tend to ignore wolves when thinking of redwall since they were mentioned once and then never mentioned again--AFAIK--so I tend to ignore it, but just for completions sake, let's look at the sizes of the gray wolf.

Gray wolf: 105–160 cm length, 80–85 cm height and 43–45 kg weight.

[The Skarzs]

^

[Sebias of Redwall]

Hmm...I'm thinking about putting wolves in my fanfic "The Grey Warlord" and i was wondering, do you think a tribe of wolves would crush the long patrol or not?

[Tungro]

Probably, wolves are about the same size as (if not bigger) badgers, and just as ferocious (though not as smart). It all depends on how big the patrol is and how smart the leaders are

[Sebias of Redwall]

I guess it might also depend on the warriors in the long patrol too, because Cuthbert fought like a badgerlord in one of the books.

[The Skarzs]

You can make them however you want, since they're not seen and we don't know what they're like. I've always imagined them like the Rangers from LotR.

[Sebias of Redwall]

Whatever I want eh. *rubs hands together while chuckling*

[Tungro]

You can make them however you want, since they're not seen and we don't know what they're like. I've always imagined them like the Rangers from LotR.

Interesting comparison, in my option that would make the wolves Fell Beasts or Nazgul 

[Sebias of Redwall]

I always kinda thought of Ravens to be like Fell Beasts.

[The Grey Coincidence]

Wolves in the Grey Warlord hmmm.... I'm not going to comment on this beyond 'that sounds interesting'.
Redwall sizes are wonky, but I tend to imagine them as more in-line with their natural heights than say, the TV show depicted. I think the easiest way to explain it is like this: mice, shrews, voles are scaled up (but shrews are still tiny) to a bit bellow the average vermin, who I tend to imagine as squirel-sized-a head lower if you will- heights obviously vary from character to character is, Mathias is shorter than Martin imho.
Then hares and hedgehog's (who are a bit shorter than hares) are next, being taller than the average stoat, ferret, rat, weasel etc (although rats go somewhere in the middle. Can be big like the Gloomer or small like Vitch)
Then otters, foxes and felines at about double the height of the average stoat, ferret, pine marten etc
Then about a head taller than that you get the badgers and wolverines. Obviously it depends on the character; children and old beasts will be smaller than someone in their prime.

Wolves I'd imagine as bigger than badgers- about twice the average height of foxes, cats and otters. So yeah, pretty big.

That's just me of course. Although now I'm more interested in seeing a giant otter in Redwall (one that is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge, ya know alligator-sized).

[The Skarzs]

Giant Amazon river otter?

See, it's hard to really put a size on creatures when there really is no hard visual of how Jacques wanted them, akin to the maps. (Contrast that with LotR, where we are spoiled by Tolkien actually drawing the maps. . .) But that's kind of the point of the series, to have you use your imagination.

[Steelinghades]

Hmm...I'm thinking about putting wolves in my fanfic "The Grey Warlord" and i was wondering, do you think a tribe of wolves would crush the long patrol or not?

I recall two fanfics with wolves in them.

One had the wolves only being a bit bigger then foxes, and thus smaller then badgers, but they operated as a pack and were far more vicious and skilled then any other vermin and that was why they were feared.

The other, the blood between us, had them being much bigger, A giant fox to quote a woodlander from the story and they were dangerous because of raw strength and size.

In essence what I'm try into convey is it doesn't matter exactly how you put them in just that they're well thought and well written in. You do that and people will be happy.