Rogue Crew Casualty Count?

[Dotti]

Has anyone else found the number of casualties in the Rogue Crew unusually light???  There were the four young hares killed at the beginning, the hare killed by the pygmy shrews, Uncle Wullow, Swiffo, and two hares and two otters that were killed in the final battle.  Plus the guosim shrews.  If you say that the guosim lost twenty, that's only 30... seems a bit light to me...

[Osu]

I think it's just a play on the old cliche of the good guys winning despite innumerable odds, myself. Given the Rogue Crew didn't have any real armies like other books, the death toll wasn't terribly abnormal... all my opinion only, of course.

[Folgrimeo]

I beg to differ. The number of deaths may or may not have been light (also it seems like you're ignoring vermin deaths), but their brutality made it seem a lot worse than it was. Also, 11 goodbeast deaths not counting the Guosim, that's more than most Redwall books isn't it? Usually you might get 3 deaths. In this book, it seemed goodbeasts and vermin were dropping like flies.

[Captain Tammo]

I think it was fairly light, but still, it was a great adventure!

[Osu]

EDIT:
Derp, Osu can't read usernames. XD It must come with being old. Yes. That's my excuse. Yeeaahhh...

Kindly disregard the former meat of this post. Move along, move along, nothing to see here...


Tammo: Agreed, it was a great adventure! Nice to see another visit to the north, as brief as it was.

[Martha Braebuck]

Has anyone else found the number of casualties in the Rogue Crew unusually light???  There were the four young hares killed at the beginning, the hare killed by the pygmy shrews, Uncle Wullow, Swiffo, and two hares and two otters that were killed in the final battle.  Plus the guosim shrews.  If you say that the guosim lost twenty, that's only 30... seems a bit light to me...

yes, it kind of was. But there was too many sudden and big deaths, so I was okay with that. 

[Dotti]

Yeah, I wasn't counting vermin deaths.  The characters who died just seemed to be not as well known for the most part.  I have to say, though I saw Swiffo's death coming.  I just had a feeling he had to die.  The Rogue Crew was a really awesome book!   SO much better than the previous three!

[Lutra]

I just finished reading Rogue Crew and I find that the death count seems normal for a Redwall book (including vermin deaths...which is just about all vermin metioned).  I really was bummed to read about Swiffo and his demise like that.  I think its because I disliked Ruggan because he came off as a brash teenager when you read how he acts....he grows up of course, but Swiffo was very much the anti-Ruggan.

Maybe the biggest surprise ought to be the one who didn't die, survived, and supposedly lived on peacefully--Crumdun.  How many vermin get that lucky in a Redwall book?

[Log-a-Log]

Yeah, the only other one that I can think of is Ashleg in Mossflower

[Lutra]

I thought Ashleg was killed by that eagle thing that roamed around Kotir.  He didn't survive.....did he? 

[Dotti]

No, Ashleg survived.  Argular had always wanted to taste pine marten, but Ashleg got away without eaten.  Am I remembering wrong, or was Ashleg rather decent, kind of like Lord Verdauga???

[Lutra]

I don't recall Ashleg doing anything decent, given his position in the story.  He didn't seem to do much outside of messing up and upsetting Tsarmina often.

[Dotti]

True, but did he do anything really bad, like order somebeat's death or something???  I haven't read Mossflower in forever, but I seem to remember that Ashleg was just kind of a leftover from Verdauga's reign who really didn't do much except get in Tsarmina's way.  I think he's kind of one of those guys who is in with the bad guys so everyone assumes he's bad, but he really doesn't do anything evil...

[James Gryphon]

The only thing I can think of that Ashleg did that would qualify as particularly bad was his presumed minor role in poisoning Lord Greeneyes; other than that, he doesn't do anything that stands out beyond anyone else as "evil", and he did walk away from the horde:

Ashleg slipped through the gates and began walking south--away from Tsarmina, Mossflower and dreams of ambitious conquest. Maybe there was somewhere under a different sky where he could find a new way of life; maybe somewhere there were friends waiting who knew how to live simply, without delusions of grandeur.

While I'm not sure this is strong enough to classify Ashleg as a gray character at the end of Mossflower, it isn't a bad case for it.

[Dotti]

Yes, if he isn't a gray character, at the very least he's not one of the worst bad characters.  And while he isn't one of the likeable villains (like Grubbage, Romsca, Blaggut) his comment seems to imply he's looking for a peaceful life.