Land over the seas

[Gears]

i dont really like the idea of that. because if there were, then why hasnt any people invaded mossflower? I think that these books make woodland creatures the dominant species.

[Captain Tammo]

Hey, let's revive the oldest [unlocked] topic on this board!

Brian said numerous times that there were no humans in Redwall. But there wasn't exactly proof of that in the books, was there? So I guess the reader can still imagine, right? Can you imagine walking through the woods, getting lost and finding a red sandstone abbey in the middle of everything?!

If Mossflower is inhabited only by critters that are found in Britain, and everything else comes from over the seas, then maybe we can say that the land across the sea is like that across the Atlantic from Britain's east? Suddenly the lands of ice and snow are akin to Iceland, Greenland and Canada. The tropical islands beyond where the sun sets are the far-off Caribbean islands. Perhaps there is a Mossflower-like land mass like the woods on the USA's east coast somewhere over there, too?

[Nadaz, voice of the host]

That might be true but how would you explain how he characters get to places like Sampetra which has a very different climate than Mossflower with relatively fast speed.

[Captain Tammo]

Well, the idea is that there is inspiration taken from various places (as if Brian put a "loosely based on real locations" tag at the beginning of the novel). Not so much that the places everything is based on is the actual world. If the story calls for an island not too far away, like Sampetra, then poof! there it is!

Looking at the Redwall wiki, it seems that Sampetra derives its name from a Galic word for summer, "Sam", and a Latin word for rock, "Petra". So, Sampetra = Summer Rock. Sounds a lot like a Caribbean island to me! Maybe Brian took some creative liberties and moved some things around to better fit the story. Or maybe he always made things up from scratch and there was never any real-world influence there?

[Sanddunes]

I have always wondered what was over the seas in the Redwall books. It said at the end of the Bellmaker Mariel, Dandin, and a few others went over the seas with a ship. Also, I might be wrong, but I think it said that Cluny was from over the seas.
It seems to have a lot of mystery around it.

I sometimes wander what happened to them after The Bellmaker

[Captain Tammo]

I sometimes wander what happened to them after The Bellmaker

I guess that's what makes these stories tug at your heartstrings a little. We never really know what happens after the books end, do we?

[Nadaz, voice of the host]

I have thought about the tropical isles in the books and I think they may likely be almost tropical islands like say the Isles of Scily which are very close offshore from main land Great Britain.
 

[The Skarzs]

Perhaps! It's obvious Brian took artistic liberties, so any warm tropical/semi-tropical island could be a candidate for the inspiration.