Plot - Project Villu

This article is mostly a series of notes along with some background information meant to help with the writing of the actual story itself.

Project Villu is a short story that takes place during the Conquest of Rustillan and focuses on a young injured soldier dealing with the aftermath of the Battle of the Perilous Pass. Having fought for the defeated Kingdom of Rustillan, the man is left in a field of the dead with his face and arm severely injured, leaving his dominant hand nearly useless and his right eye destroyed. The main theme of the tale is survival—dealing with both the physical consequences of the injuries, but more importantly, the psychological blow to the defeated man's will to live and his sense of worth.

Background

The main character of the story is a nobleman from Rustillan who is in line to inherit his father's holdings close to the town of Mehlbek. His father's is an old main with a love for hard work, but his health is also on the decline and the signs are clear that he won't be long for the world. Were both the main character and his father to die, their land would pass on to a nephew who the protagonist of the story fears will undermine his father's legacy.

Development

He wonders whether he is enough of a man to marry the woman who he was about to marry before he marched off to war in defense of the realm. With his injuries he has become incapable of the work he’d once been proud of doing, he fears he is ill-suited to take on the burdens that come with owning land, dreads what his sweetheart will think of him in the state he’s in, eventually wondering whether or not it would be better to simply stay in the bloodstained dirt, remaining a casualty of war. Were he to die there, he’d be a fallen hero for his people—someone who died valiantly against a powerful foreign invader—instead of surviving to become a pitiful cripple who would be a burden instead of a provider.
As the protagonist ponders his options and whether or not he is worth the effort to save, a Pallernic soldier approaches and questions the dying man. He asks where the main character’s allegiance lies, to which he answers that he is a man of Rustillan, hoping that the invader will strike him down and prevent him from having to make a decision of his own. Despite their differences, the invader shows kindness and admires the wounded man’s loyalty and love for his homeland. He promises to aid him however he can, reminding the main character of his own promises.
In the end, the main character will fight to survive because he’d made a promise to his betrothed to love and care for her until death and beyond, and giving up and dying would have been a violation of that oath. He is uncertain whether she would even accept a cripple as a husband and doesn’t know how he will be able to provide for the family and their holdings in such troubled times, but despite that, he figures that for as long as he draws breath, he’ll remain devoted to her in whatever way he can, even if the rest of the world might cast him aside.

Plot type

Short Story

Related prose

Short Story

Setting year

1208 AA

Inspiration

The working title for the story is Project Villu, named after Villu of Katku from A. H. Tammsaare's novel Kõrboja peremees (The Master of Kõrboja), which was one of the sources of inspiration for the themes of this short story. Unfortunetly the book has never been translated into English, as far as I can tell, so if you're curious about it, you'll either have to read it in Estonian or see if there's a translation in another language that you can read.
A somewhat less depressing source of inspiration was the ending of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Both of those stories had felt close to me and my own struggles as a disabled heir to a piece of land—the legacy of my parents—and so I wanted to do something similar and to pour some more of my own struggles and turmoil into this concoction of a short story.