Things Better Left Unvisited:
Exactly What It Sounds Like, Mates.
There's a wide variety of settings in the Redwallverse: Woodlands, grasslands, rivers, mountains, shores, the open seas, deserts, canyons, icebergs, tropical islands, etc... And Brian Jacques did a smashing job on all of the above, especially the forest settings.
But he did a half-assed job on the swamps and marshes (blesshisheart---can't attack me now!).
Show of hands, how many of you have ever seen or seen a picture of a marsh or wetland? Seeing one in a National Geographic counts: It doesn't magically get purified by the camera or something. I KNOW there are so many myths and kooky beliefs regarding swamps. Kind of like there are a lot of myths and kooky beliefs regarding races of people. It doesn't make them right automatically just because a lot of English rubes believe it.
According to the beasts of the Redwallverse, swamps are horrid wastelands where one wrong step will get you sucked down into a world of muddy suffering from which there is NO escape. Basically, it's movie quicksand.
And you know how realistic movie quicksand is, right? Not very. Quicksand (and mud that acts like it, I presume) is really more of a wet inconvenience and a sudden jolt that you laugh about later in real life. Just... just SWIM, you stupid mice. C'mon, ferrets can float. I know. I've seen 'em do it.
*Spider's Pal's Pet Ferret--Redwallized*
The ferret wandered down the path, confused and a bit put off by the strange surroundings. Minutes ago he was rooting in the armoire, looking for the nook where he had that fake neon green feather that he really liked. Now he was in some woods, and he was bigger. And he was wearing a shirt and some antiquated leggings.
"Hullo? Who's there?" he asked to the treeshade, then clapped his paws over his mouth in shock, "Holy sh*t! My English sounds like English now! Not 'Grrllblllrrrriiii-grrrlbbllrii'!"
Suddenly Captain Kirk (yes. Just... yes) the ferret spotted a pond a little ways off the path. Shrieking with delight, he bounded down the embankment and splashed about, floating like a cork on the surface.
"Wheeeee! I love bein' a ferret!"
He was joined by a trio of female rats with black and white markings, Maggie, May, and Daisy Duke (Yes, I know...). The three tussled and giggled, havin' a good ol' time without a single thought of maiming any creature unless it was a ham cube from a pack of lunch meat.
In fact, survival guide made after 1900 always tell those reading them that the surest way to survive quicksand is to... kind of try to not drown and float over to the side and pull yourself out. It's really not that hard. Mountains are far more treacherous: Rock slides, mudslides, even the possibility that the "mountain" is really a volcano. Yet mountains are just sort of there, not too dangerous but not super benign either.
Meanwhile, swamps get the pedophile treatment for landscapes. They're just... creepy, and horrible! Nobeast wants to go THERE!
And ol' Brian seems to forget that swamp is the life's blood of the planet, teeming with living things. For an animal that lives to, oh, I dunno, BE ALIVE, a swamp is the place to be. Yet Jacques skims over the description of swamp as a wet wonderland, ignores the fact that if he goes into orgasmic detail about the plants of the woods, he ought to do the same for the wetlands. But he doesn't, because swamps are evil.
*Sunflash Grows a Brain*
The badger could feel the inescapable force relentlessly pulling him down into the terrible swamp. Nope, that wasn't it. Wait for it, wait for it...
The band of newts, slow-worms (legless lizards) and magical air-breathing eels, which are all erroneously lumped into the reptile class of animals even though only one of them is a reptile, stared at him in confusion. What the heck was the stripedog doing? Sort of...floating, and splashing on the top of the deep mud...
A kestrel, which is not actually a hawk but a KESTREL, but is continually called one anyway, flew overhead, assaulting the hell out of an obviously malnourished newt and an eel and sadistically sentencing them to die at the top of a tree. The eel gasped in agony as his gills dried up, since he's a FREAKING FISH AND SHOULDN'T BE OUT OF THE WATER. The newt began to suffocate since his skin was drying out up in the humidity-less breeze, dying much more slowly and torturey. The kestrel casually shrugs as two otters show up, staring at the frantically wigging out badger, who is obviously not in danger of drowning.
"Er... 'Ey, matey, try swimmin' to th' edge," one otter suggested.
"These guys're a little..." the other otter whispered in his brother's ear, making a twirly motion with his paw. Then they decided to go on a quest with the insane creatures.
Wait... isn't the size of the characters on a human-like scale in comparison to the landscapes and trees? Where in the world does muddy swamp get so deep it can seem bottomless to a twelve-foot giant? The Amazon? Mossflower's lush and wet, but... it ain't no Amazon. It's freaking Wales. There is no lethal forty-foot deep mud in Wales or England or Scotland. SWAMP. IS. HARMLESS.
More may follow. If you like, you may leave an as-of-yet unanswered bit of unusual Redwall yore as a suggestion, but it is more than likely I'll cover the grand majority of oddness and unmentioned unmentionableness.