Been a minute, huh? My conscious mind forgot that Outcast was up next, but maybe some part of me knew, and that, not spacing out on this project for months at a time, is why I didn’t follow up with this next bit.
Outcast is a two-track Redwall book, and one of the tracks is the next heir of Salamandastron having a badger warrior coming of age. Many books after would follow this track. It was serviceable. It even has a predecessor in Salamandastron itself. If you had a destined badgerlord, they could wander all the fuck over the place doing battle, picking up adversaries, having bloodrage, and then at the end they got an effortlessly neat conclusion by becoming badgerlord (or badgerlady, the title appeared to be gendered even if the job theoretically was not).
The badger is fine. I have nothing against the badger. He is noble and good hearted and he has a big, cool weapon, though I do not remember which one it is. They all had a signature weapon, like shonen battle anime characters. I looked at the cover and he’s holding a big club? But the cover art was not always meticulously accurate. More importantly, he had a bird friend! Birds, if you recall, are real wildcards. Alone among taxons, every bird gets to have whatever moral outlook they prefer, and it’s not even determined by carnivory. There were complete asshole birds and noble hero birds and indifferent force of nature birds. The badger’s friend was a warrior with great honor. They were friends and they battled together and then the bird died and was mourned forever. Relationship goals. It’s noted by the narrator of the flimsy frame story that this badger wrote poetry, rare among those possessed of the bloodrage, and reads a bit of doggeral he penned for his dead bird friend.
It’s nice. It’s fine. In any other book I might have more to say about them. Looking at the map they clearly had some neat adventures. There’s a gorge of foxes. Maybe if I worked at it I could remember what that was about.
But that’s not what any of us is here for. Sorry, that badger.
The badger had a nemesis who was a generic-for-Redwall bandit lord. He was a ferret with a horde. They did bad stuff. There may have been a reason he and the badger were nemeses, like somebody killed somebody’s dad, it’s not important.
That bandit leader had a baby ferret. Through a series of events, that baby ferret was found and raised by a mouse from Redwall. He was brought up with the other dibbuns. (Dibbuns, if you recall, was the entirely pointless in-universe word for baby animals who lived at the abbey. I haven’t been able to find any outside basis for it. If anyone has any ideas, please share.) Beloved and indulged, treated like every other weird orphan they collected like Pokemon cards over there.
And he was a bit of an asshole. He was occasionally rude and sometimes stole snacks. (Are there scenes of young Redwallers stealing snacks in every book? There sure are!) And this was treated by everyone but his adoptive mother as clear evidence of his intrinsic evil, and she like a moron for not seeing it.
His name was Veil. Which is frankly a pretty cool name for a fantasy character. But it was given to this infant foundling child, it’s later revealed, explicitly because it’s an anagram for evil and vile. There’s a poem about it, because when you name a child through portentous word games, you need to jot down a few couplets. That’s how it works.
In another author’s hands, this could be an interesting if somewhat cliché story about how treating a child as a suspect outsider is a good way to make sure they wind up pretty fucked in the head. But no, they’re actually all completely correct to distrust him, and he was born evil, because his species is evil, fuck you. As is evidenced when he escalates from being a bit of a dick sometimes to barely-motivated murder, whereupon he makes a break for it.
Can hardly blame him, but again, this is not positioned in the narrative as the result of treating him like a monster until he became one.
His mother (I’m sure she’s named after a plant, but I don’t remember which one) goes after him, and then begins the bit of the book where everyone kind of wanders around encountering minor perils and long walks and good meals until paths begin to converge. Most Redwall books have a bit in the middle answering this description. It’s very fun, if you’re nine. The ferret murder-teen and the concerned mother and that badger and his bird friend (bet you forgot about him) all do that for a bit.
Veil finds his dad and they posture at each other a bit. The badger starts to cause problems for the evil horde. And then the mom catches up, and the evil dad ferret (I may need a diagram) tries to kill her for no particular reason.
And Veil leaps in front of the knife to save her and dies in his mother’s arms, claiming he was intrinsically bad and not worth anything other than this sacrifice.
Oh, for a better book.
You can assume that in the background the evil dad ferret got killed by the badger and the horde was defeated and all that shit. Skipping to the denouement, when the mother whose child bled to death on her after taking a blow meant for her returns home. And is offered sympathy. And states outright that this was the best possible outcome, because, after all, Veil was evil and vile, and could never have lived among the goodbeasts of Redwall.
Everyone I know who was a Redwall kid hates this so much. Brought it up to a group of gaming friends and every single person had a rant ready to go. Mr. Jacques is on record stating that this is a feature, not a bug, of his universe, that kids want stories where good is good and bad is bad. I think maybe he learned a little from this one, though. There are more surprise good guys, neutral bystanders, and harmless cowards among most of the future books’ vermin species.
But then five years later he wrote Taggerung, which is just Outcast of Redwall backwards with exactly the same conclusion, so fuck me I guess.
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