This timeline was originally posted on another website before I left that site. I am reposting it here, and intend to continue it. I love the Redwall series, for all its shortcomings, and this story is intended to be a tribute to it that at the same time reconstructs the Redwall world.

I'd like to thank the author Highwing and his Urthblood saga for providing a major inspiration. I'd also like to thank krinzbez for supporting this story when it was on that other website.

I hope you enjoy.

Prologue

"In the grand story of history, many beasts come and go and are but a pawnote. It is those few, however, that have been chosen by destiny, which shape that great narrative, and lead us to a future none could foresee."

- Attributed to Abbot Vrenner, Redwall Abbey.

From the journal of Apprentice Redwall Recorder Terrance

Today, Abbot Brendon named this the Summer of the Many Faces, in recognition of the many new beasts we have at Redwall that Gerad and young Lord Urthpaw's Long Patrol freed from Boluk's slave fleet, and I'm sure that Brother Abel is gushing in his journal about welcoming so many new Redwallers to our wonderful Abbey.

I am of course glad that those beasts where freed from the corsair's clutches, and the stories they have to tell are certainly interesting, but at the moment, all that I can think about is what teaching history in Abbey school will be like in future seasons as I try to explain to a horde of rowdy Dibbuns the difference between this summer and the Summer of the Many Friends and the Summer of New Faces and the half-dozen other Summers that have names that have to do with beasts and the plurality thereof!

Recorder Abel always says that the traditional method of naming our seasons has always worked fine; but I've always thought that there could be a better, more efficient, less arbitrary way.

Well, I guess there's nothing that can be done about it for now. But when I'm recorder...

417 AR: Brother Terrance, recorder of Redwall Abbey, begins using his own dating system in his records and writing; the Autumn that Matthias the Warrior defeated Cluny the Scourge and recovered the Sword of Martin the Warrior was set by the Recorder as 0 years After the Recovery Of the Sword (AR), with each consecutive season being marked by a number; That winter was designated 1, the spring 2, and so forth. From the records of Redwall's Gatehouse, Terrance calculates that the current season is 417 AR.

Brother Terrance's system will be mostly rejected by the rest of the Abbey for a time, who continue to refer to the seasons by the poetic name given to them by the Abbot or Abbess of Redwall. However, the Recorders of the Abbey take to using the system, as it makes record-keeping much more efficient.

The Badger Lords of Salamandastron and the Long Patrol also take to using the system, judging it to be more efficient than the traditional way.

481-2 AR: Known as the Winter of the Southern Rats to Redwall; 481 saw yet another vermin hoard attempt to conquer Mossflower country; Bashou and his army of rats. Sweeping up through the vast marshes of the Far Southland and into Southsward, then crossing the Southern Desert into Mossflower. Bashou's army hailed from a land called "Zhong-guo", a vast Empire far to the south.

Bashou's army was not only made up of hundreds of rats (as well as many more mercenary vermin picked up along the way), and almost as many slaves, but also armed with fearsome weaponry, the likes of which had never been imagined; catapult and ballista-thrown caskets of the black explosive substance known as "stormpowder".

Bashou's horde is formidable, and manages to overrun most of most of Mossflower and besiege both Redwall and Salamandastron, in the process killing the current Badger Lord Urthpaw and almost destroying the two Bells of the Abbey. However, his army is weakened and depleted after seasons of nomadic warfare, and he is eventually defeated by the squirrel warrior of Redwall, Dillon, and Urthpaw's young son Brockvine.

Once again, peace had been brought to Mossflower country, but this time, the status quo that had long held sway had begun to crack.

483 AR: As Bashou's former soldiers and slaves settle in and around Redwall, The Long Patrol secretly gathers as many stormpowder caskets as they can get their paws on, as well as tracking down groups of survivors from the horde who had fled to the south and east and interrogating them about Zhong-guo in general, and more specifically; the nature and formula of the stormpowder.

The young Lord Brockvine keeps these operations from the Redwallers; he knows that Warrior (and later Abbot) Dillon and the rest of the Elders would rather see the explosive disappear from the face of the world altogether. But Brockvine feels that the Long Patrol must be ready to face a similar threat in the future, and that if they had been at the time, his father might still be alive.