Anders and crew weren’t out of the woods just because they lived through the horde that took their homes and families from them.
It wasn’t long before they were found by another band of vermin, and enslaved. For almost three years they suffered under the yoke of a rat warlord before managing to break free… but now they had to survive on their own, and life wasn’t like the stories they had been told of the selfless altruism of the beasts at Redwall. Villages had their own mouths to feed, and an adolescent otter, hare and two badgers, one of whom was a toddler, was too much for most of the small settlements of the woodland to handle.
It began as petty theft mostly, taking what was needed to feed and cloth themselves, but Anders had let wrath and hate fester in him for too long. He decided to finally cross the line and use what he had learned from watching vermin during his time in bondage, and take what he felt the woodlanders owed him and his friends for abandoning them.
In the months following their escape from the vermin warlord, Anders had managed to accrue a small following of other orphans, some victims of vermin hordes, some vermin themselves. He went to work turning them into a raiding force as best he could, stealing armor and weapons from wherever they could get them.
A small village, the first one to turn him and his friends away when they had escaped their bonds, was his first raid. Never in their wildest nightmares would they have guessed that an otter and a badger would lead an attack on a woodlander village, much less at the head of a force of both vermin and other “good” beasts. At his command the village was razed, everything of value taken, and anyone who dared fight back was put to the blade. The population of mostly mice were simply unprepared for the vendetta of the young crimson otter.

Art by  alexjohnson93