It all started many moons ago, when I first rose to power. It was a complicated and somewhat bloody affair, but really not that interesting to look back on. Most of my rivals removed each other from the board, leaving me untouched. I wasn't even aware that half of them were traitors until they were dead and buried. Guess you could call me lucky. My story starts at the tail-end of that inheritance conflict. I was the new warlord, and any good warlord has to consolidate their power.

That means removing rivals.

The massive, moving swarm of vermin jeered as one as Sulan was dragged unceremoniously across the ground, towards a waiting chopping block. The fox snarled and spat, bared his teeth and growled and made a great show of his hatred for everybeast present, but he could not quite stop the shaking in his legs or quell the fear pulsing through him with every heartbeat as his fate drew ever closer.

"Oh, hurry up will you? That seer should've been dead half an hour ago!" came the voice of the warlord, the horde's new leader, the horde's bane.

The beasts dragging Sulan quickened their pace, lest they find themselves next on the chopping block, and dumped the fox unceremoniously on the platform. A final burst of courage, the realization that he did not want to die, Sulan fought back at the last moment. He twisted around, stretched his jaws open and made a move to tear at the nearest throat. The futile effort was too little, too late; a pair of sharp kicks to the ribs beat the last rebellious spirit out of him. The hordebeasts jeered, enjoying every minute of the fox's suffering, but hushed immediately when the warlord raised his paw for silence.

"What a pathetic way to die," he commented dryly, and his horde burst into fresh gales of laughter. "I do hope our beloved seer gives us some wise words of wisdom before he leaves us. But then, if he were truly wise he would never have ended up here! No, he is a fool. A destiny-loving fool, too obsessed with prophecy to know what he's looking at. We are the greatest horde in vermin history!" A massive cheer followed, and the warlord waited for it to simmer down before continuing, "And we will prove it by doing what no other horde and no other warlord has ever conceived before: We will sack Redwall Abbey, and burn it to the ground!" "Fools!" Sulan choked out. "Only death awaits you at the Red–" The seer's final warning was drowned out by the cheer of the horde, but the warlord heard it all the same and turned to face the seer with a grin on his face.

"The same old nonsense still? I admire your resolve. You're the most stubborn creature I've ever met- and you know how mother gets."

Sulan spat. "The admiration of a beast like you means nothing to me. Burn in Hellgates, mouse!"

"Oh, I intend to." The warlord raised his axe. "But I think I'll conquer Redwall first!" The axe came down.

If I had known what I knew now, I would have adjusted the angle of attack. I'd have lopped Sulan's head off then and there. Instead I merely banished him. Sent him off alone and humiliated. I was young, I was naive. I didn't realise being a warlord meant getting your paws bloody. But we'll come back to that, let's fast forwards a bit to when my horde arrived in Mossflower.

The trip to Mossflower was an uneventful one to say the least. Mountains, forests, streams, the whole lot rolled by without any sort of consequence. It was boring and I hated boring. Boring is a tinderbox when one is a warlord. Idle paws are Vulpuz' workshop and Vulpuz likes nothing more than to sow discord and calamity and lop off one head to replace with another.

"Typical vermin," the mouse muttered in disgust. He was short, even by the standards of mice, but nothing about him stood out. His half-groomed fur, a common brown, his blade-tipped tail, a furless pink, his villainous cloak, a violent red. Amongst other mice the only thing that set him apart was an unmistakable aura of evil. Among vermin, it was the fact that he was a mouse and barely reached up to most creature's hips.

Nevertheless, he made himself smile and did his best to keep up morale where he could. Some beasts required praise, flattery or bribery to stay in line. "That's it Lackfoot! Keep it up for another half-day and I'll find somebeast big and strong to carry you!" Others required threats. "In case my threat was unclear, Lackfoot, I will peel the skin off your body and give my mother a nice warm cloak if you continue slowing us down!"

But at last, the arduous journey had come to an end. "We have reached Mossflower!" There came a ragged cheer from his ranks. "Now make camp!" The eager vermin began setting down their luggage, many collapsing where they stood. One rat had the audacity to snore! "By that I mean," Harlapple spoke through gritted teeth. "Set up the tents, make up the fires and organize a sentry!" There were groans of protest, quickly silenced and replaced with more cheers by the slightest raising of his eyebrows.

Power felt good.

While his horde got to work on the fires and tents that would keep them warm at night, Harlapple scuttled out of sight to a more secure part of the marching column, where a fence had been set up around an already-prepared tent. Dismissing the vermin guardsbeasts, Harlapple took a deep breath, dusted off his cloak, cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, took another deep breath and at last entered.

"Mother if you don't mind I'll require my-" The warlord was cut off, finding himself in the embrace of the one creature in the world he allowed to hold him tenderly. He returned the hug, albeit very reluctantly, as the old mouse showered him with her usual greetings.

She was an old, frail thing, her brown fur just on the cusp on turning grey. She smelled of apples and cinnamon, and wore an old pink frock with flower patterns she had stitched on herself. Shortened by age, and leaning on a walking stick, she stood out like a sore thumb in the ranks of battle-hardened vermin.

"Oh Harl, how lovely for you to visit me! And just in time for tea! How wonderful! Is the horde playing nicely? Have you been eating well? Goodness!" she stepped backwards, unwound her paws from around him and placed them on her chest. "Y-your cloak! It's filthy!"

"Mother-"

"And you've been wearing it in public?"

"Mothe-"

"Oh dear, what will the neighbours think. Letting you out like that!"

"Moth-"

"Nonono! Don't mother me you naughty rascal," she tugged at his ear. "You will remove it at once and find yourself a proper change of clothes! I-I think I packed your favourite jumper." Harlapple sighed, and smiled despite himself. Without another word, the warlord removed his cloak and allowed his mother to groom and fuss and worry and spoil him, in the infuriating way only doting mothers could.

Three hours later, Harlapple left the tent, clad in a rosy pink jumper with a massive red 'H' stitched on that for some reason clashed furiously with the double-bladed battle-axe he had slung over a shoulder. As he passed through the camp, he caught quite a few beasts snickering. They laughed much less when he asked him what the joke was. And not at all when he informed them that the last beast who laughed at his outfit had been made into one. Thus armed and ready, and leaving many of his subjects traumatised by a description too gory for words, Harlapple made his way through Mossflower in search of local vermin to press-gang into his army.

It did not take long for him to run into a group of water-rats who seemed to be in sore need of leadership. "And if I ever finds dat treemouse again," a big fat one with one ear had his back to the mouse sauntering forwards. "I'll grabs her skulls an-an' I'll-" Slopgut growled in indignation as the useless meat bags in front of him began to snicker. "Someding funny?" he demanded, paws akimbo.

"I was about to ask the same thing!" Harlapple snarled, stomping over to stand besides the leader of the tribe, who, he had already decided, would make very good arrow fodder.

"Dere's nothing funny 'ere!" Slopgut roared, silencing his pack of cronies. The fat rat turned to face the newcomer, and could not help giving the mouse a derisive snort. "Well lookie here! Anoder woodlander come right to us!" the fat rat grinned wide, chuckling sinisterly. "Bet it's anoder one of dem stone-house folk!"

"Just a lil' mousie!" another rat added excitedly. "It can tell us all about de treasures!" the rat stormed forwards, cackling gleefully. "Dis one won't escape so easily! Hihihihihihihihi!"

"Are you familiar with the term 'laughing one's head off'?" Harlapple asked, nonchalantly.

"No?" the nameless rat replied, confused.

"Keep cackling and you will be," the warlord warned, his face darkening. As expected, the rat backed down at once. "Now, if we're all done with the pleasantries I'd like to talk business." Harlapple turned to Slopgut. "By your prominent stomach," he jabbed the stomach with his tail-spike, earning a yelp. "And incompetent way of carrying yourself I'm going to guess you are the leader here."

"I-I is!" Slopgut declared, drawing himself to his full height so that he towered over the mouse.

"Not anymore." The mouse met Slopgut's gaze, and watched with some satisfaction as the larger beast swallowed audibly and shifted his weight awkwardly. Clearly, nobeast had ever challenged him for leadership. "Now, you're all coming with me whether you like it or not," Harlapple went on, addressing the gang as a whole. "It's up to you whether you join my horde or the slave train."

Unfortunately, this story is not entirely mine. There are other creatures that form an integral part of it. One of whom you will meet now, in all his dramatic glory.

In that unfortunate slave train of the emerging warlord was a dormouse clad in a surprisingly clean- black habit. His name, and full title, was Brother Disibod. He was very deep in thought as he drove tent stakes into the ground. Beside him, a very sullen fieldmouse dibbun was doing the very useless task of handing him stakes.

Not too long ago Disibod had been in the throes of despair. All of his fellow missionaries had been killed by a massive storm that had hit off the coast, leaving him stranded in an unknown and heartless land. But he would never fall for the selfish lie of despair again. The sight of Rye (the dibbun beside him), one so young and innocent, deprived of all hope and in the deepest recesses of fear made the desire for justice burn inside the dormouse's chest. He had never felt this before; he used to be a gentle soul. But the horde would pay for causing such distress to a child… a dibbun, no less! The desire was so strong, that he accidentally drove a stake as far as it would go into the ground with one blow, causing the string holding that part of the tent to go flying.

"Oi!" shouted his weasel supervisor, kicking him over, "What di' I tell 'e 'bout the height o' the stakes? Two mousie fists high, not six feet under. Now fix it or I'll send yew six feet under."

Disibod was shaking with rage at this point, but he hid the rage so well that the weasel thought he was shaking in fear as he fixed his mistake. Disibod had to remind himself that he was in this for the long game. He had built up trust with his captors through his readiness to work obediently. They even listened to his request to be chained next to Rye. Eventually he would escape this place and take Rye with him. To where he knew not, anywhere but here would do.

I did say he was a bit dramatic, didn't I? But then, I have never been a slave, so how could I possibly know what he felt like? Judge not a beast if you have not walked a mile in their pawsteps.

In a much happier place, Disibod was woken up to start on laundry… at three in the morning. He was given a small tallow candle that could barely hold enough light to see what he was doing. Did he need to start laundry at that time? No, but his oh-so-gracious driver wanted to make Disibod's life worse… and possibly get a promotion.

The weasel made the displaced dormouse rewash garments at least three times because he claimed that he could see dirt, which were actually shadows cast from the candle. This continued all the way up until dawn.

Just as the last of the laundry pile was cleared, a flabby ferret sauntered over and with a wet kerflump! dropped an armful of particularly pungent foot wraps and under jerkins at the dormouse's feetpaws. "I expect these all to smell like lilacs," he grinned.

Disibod without a sound started to wash the unsavory clothes, trying with all his might to not throw the washboard at the ferret (or weasel for that matter).

"Make sure ye scrubs 'em real good-like. Some of that wrapping can stand on their own."

Just as the dormouse was going to respond, the weasel hit him with the butt of his spear. "Oi, don't you even think about talkin' back to 'im. I saw those lil' lips o' yours part!"

The ferret snickered. "Hehehehe, oh yeah, and here's one more for you!" The fettet's paunch jiggled as he peeled the very jerkin he wore off and tossed it on the dormouse's head. Despite the chill of the morning, the ample ferret managed to dampen it substantially with the effort of basic functionality. Somehow the warmth of the garment made the moisture worse.

Disibod removed the jerkin from his head an washed it, being careful not to show any displeasure. Rye's job was to fold the clothes, Disibod had shown the little mouse how to do it, but alas the little one had fallen fast asleep in the clean pile of clothes.

The weasel, not wanting to accidentally kill the little dibbun… least he incur an unfathomable wrath... kicked Disibod and pointed at the sleeping fieldmouse. "Wake him up!"

Waking up Rye required a very delicate procedure. The little thing was volatile, easily thrown into screaming panic. Disibod swallowed audibly.

Rye woke up with a scream, muffled behind a paw. He screamed even louder, until he realized that it was Disi, and Disi was nice, so he stopped screaming.

To Rye, everything was terrifying, especially the vermin everywhere. Vermin like the ones that had killed his family. Vermin that laughed as they scooped him up, as he tried to scramble away towards Mel...

"Oi, keep it down," ordered the weasel. Beads of sweat rolling down his brow. The last thing he wanted was for the noise to reach the innermost part of the camp and wake up the warlord.

But Rye liked Disi. Disi was kind and nice. He also smelled like bread. Rye kind of missed having bread. He liked bread, especially rye bread. He knew that it was silly: Rye likes rye bread, but he had a fancy to it. What he liked even more than rye bread were cinnamon rolls... But now he wasn' sure if cinnamon rolls were bread... They couldn't be, cinnamon rolls were rolls- right? All of this passed through his mind as he sat on the clean clothes. He looked at the clean clothes... and remembered he had to fold them. Rye didn't really care about how to properly fold clothes.

His most dire question burned at the front of his mind. Could Disi make bread?

While the young mouse pondered the deepest secrets of the universe, another, much less innocent one spent his morning hard at work on a speech he would deliver to the horde while indulging in one of his favourite hobbies.

Torture!

"And when he asks for mercy," Harlapple slashed at the imaginary victim. "I deliver it to him!" Brimming with excitement, Harlapple exited his tent at the crack of dawn, eager to get business out of the way before his mother was awake. She always interrupted his speeches.

Slopgut hung from a tree further away from the camp. A few kicks here, a whispered order, a harsh glare, and the majority of his horde (the beasts not busy looking after slaves) had assembled around the unfortunate rat. His former gang were also present, looking not at all bothered by their chief's predicament.

"We will be practicing some marksmanship today!" Harlapple whispered loudly- his mother had the ears of a bat where his speeches were concerned. "I want all of you to make a nice and orderly line and aim at Slopgut over there. Throw anything you've got at him. Yes, Lackfoot- your peg-leg if you must! Alright, line up!"

"D-dis isn't wot I a-a-greed te!" Slopgut whimpered, as a particularly vicious-looking vixen found herself in front of the line, weilding a wicked-looking javelin. It fell short by several dozen footpaws... pointing in the wrong direction. Javelins were rather hard to throw it seemed and some vermin found it hard to tell the pointy end from the blunt one. Harlapple winced, realizing his horde desperately needed the practice.

It was a relatively dull affair, all things considered. The few blades that reached Slopgut missed by a mile and quivered in place with the promise of death (vermin were notoriously poor at keeping their promises). Lackfoot's turn proved somewhat more entertaining, if only because the beasts present took great pleasure in watching the stoat hop over to retrieve his peg-leg while dodging fire from all the beasts still throwing things. Harlapple yawned, wondering what the slaves would cook up for breakfast.

To Slopgut the whole ordeal was a nightmare. Every new vermin seemed to throw with more and more determination and, although the rat was not a good mathematician, even he could tell that from the line of beasts it was only a matter of time until something landed. So he did the one thing a captive rat could do. Beg, scream and plead at the top of his voice, while spouting any and all thoughts that ran through his mind.

"N-no! Please! I can be useful! I-I don't wanna die! No! No!" A club sailed right past his tree and shattered against the one behind it. "I kin help! I-I'm big an' strong! Smart! Kn-know lotsa things! De big stone house! I kin tell ye about it!"

"I think you'll find there's very little you could tell me that I wouldn't already know." Harlapple pointed out, encouraging a smaller rat with a bow forwards.

"I-it's big!" Slopgut pleaded. "An' red! White treemouse lives der!" It was as he stared death in the face that Slopgut repented. He renounced his sins. Embraced cleanliness, purity and kind-heartedness. "Dis is all her fault! Hope she dies!" he cried, as tears cascaded down his cheeks.

Harlapple rolled his eyes, and stiffled a yawn as the arrow missed by a country mile.

Elsewhere, Rye was confused. Folding made no sense to him. He kept on forgetting which thing went where. Why was it so important that they were all flat squares? What was wrong with round balls of clothing? His mother had once tried to teach him, but it had never clicked for him. Rye nudged Disi for the seventeenth time that morning, "How do I do this again?"

Disibod turned to his young companion. "Well, first you need to flatten out the clothes, ~roughly like this. Then, if it has sleeves you fold them in. Then you fold it in half sideways…... and again longways." he folded a different piece slowly, making sure that Rye was paying attention.

"Why?"

"To store it better. You can fit more clothes in– let's say a box- if the clothes are folded then when they are loosely thrown in there."

"Do I fold this?" It was a tunic twice as large as Rye.

"No, I can fold that, it is too large for you to. Just make a pile of the large stuff, and I will get to it eventually."

The toddler began digging through the pile to find the large stuff

After the laundry was all washed and folded, the weasel (who had been taking a nap) decided that their next task was to pick up sticks… for… something (he didn't specify).

Disibod sort of liked this task, they were allowed to venture a fare distance from the camp. It would be an ideal way to escape… he just needed to remember what old Brother Barnabas had taught him about lock picking and the like (Brother Barnabas was a…... "converted" crook that had "decided to turn his life around").

Even Rye seemed to enjoy it. The fieldmouse ran around trying to grab as many sticks as possible, as fast as possible. "This is more fun than folding!" he cheered, but then he tripped over the weasel's foot and began to cry

The weasel picked Rye up by the scruff of the neck (slightly lifting Disibod off the ground with him, as the chain was shortened to accommodate for new slaves). "You little worm," he snapped, "The next time you do that, I will stuff your mouth with fish eyes!"

Then he threw Rye at Disibod, almost knocking him over.

Rye's eyes widdened, "I dont want fish looking at my insides!" He began to wail, burying his face in Disibod's habit.

"Shut him up, dormouse, or I will turn that fluffy tail of yours into a coat-trim!" the weasel growled. "Other slaves are not like this! Why do I have to get stuck with these two?" he muttered to himself. "And why only two? Why not five or ten? I can handle ten, no problem!"

Disibod tried his best to comfort Rye, using his scapular to wipe the tears and snot off of his face, but the fieldmouse was having none of it.

"What if the fish goes up into my brain! I don't want to be controlled by a fish!" he buried his face deeper.

"Fish eyes can't control your brain, Rye." Noting the weasel's growing impatience, Disibod turned Rye around to be focus on the task at paw. "Come now, let's pick up a few more sticks and later I will explain why fish can't do that…..."

Rye went along at a slower pace, keeping his eye on the weasel. He smells like smoke, thought Rye. I hate smoke! It did not take long for the dibbun to trip up again. But this time he did not cry, nor was it on the weasel's foot.

Footnote: Neeeew story. Kiiind of. This is an excerpt of a rather long, large and convoluted roleplay I am merely posting snippets of because publishing the roleplay as a whole would destroy my pore old pc. In summary this is good old fashioned Redwall formula, mostly from the point of view of the newest warlord in town. Lots of stupid hordebeasts shenanigans and Fruit Puns ensue!

But what is Roleplay if not Bare Bones Collaborative Story Telling? Half this chapter was written by GoatPOOP, who owns and controls the actions of Brother Disibod, one of my favourite characters in Redwall Fanfiction. And a paragraph or so by BrownSmudge, who owns and controls the actions of little Rye.

Harlapple, his mother, his horde, that seer that will be important later, and Slopgut belong to your coincidentally.

Harlapple is in fact a character I have wanted to write about for ages. You will see plenty more from him both in future chapters and also in other stories :) For once! I have the next few chapters already ready, so I can promise an update once a week until I run out of reserves :)

I think that's all I have to say, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed.