The winged are a species of man believed to be blessed as superior to regular men, because they are born with wings. They have the ability to fly, which makes them like the gods. Over the years, they have made themselves more and more powerful. Cities are now built vertically, with access to higher levels restricted to those who can fly.

They are privileged and abuse their powers. They don’t fly to the lower levels, only standing on ground built above the earth, or on mountaintops that can’t be reached. As a result, regular humans, non-winged, are abused. The Winged control the government and resources. The non-winged are left to fend for themselves on ground floor cities in disarray. The winged have a select force of regular humans that enforce their laws on the ground. These regular human soldiers are allowed into winged buildings and up a few levels as a reward for their actions. They are viewed as necessary evils by the winged in order to maintain control over the non-winged. They want the non-winged to stay where there are because they believe in the god given hierarchy that they have established.

The non-winged can carry out fairly normal lives, but there is a ceiling to their education to keep them from challenging the order of the day. Meanwhile the winged children are fully educated and trained. Despite their treatment of non-winged, the winged have a strict order of laws against themselves. Behind the corruption is the appearance of strict order. The harshest punishment for a winged who does wrong is not death, but a clipping of wings. Surviving the clippings is difficult enough, but the worst is a fall from grace. They are left on a bottom floor, never allowed to return to the land of the winged, and often killed by angry non-wingeds when they are left on their own. Similarly, winged children born with birth defects are left to die on the ground.

These are the Winged, give or take a few details.