The Zebubim, the neurotic Fly People
The zebubim, also known as the flyfolk, are perhaps simultaneously the most pitiful and annoying people in the world.
Zebubim are gifted with highly enhanced senses, especially sight, but this sensory acuity throws them into a state of perpetual overstimulation. They are also minute and quite weak, rarely exceeding a human child in size and strength. All this serves to make them skittish, neurotic, and prone to panic. In turn, this lack of focus and constant paranoia traps many zebubim at the bottom of the social ladder.
These zebubim constantly search for protection, willing to work for anyone who can care for them and give them purpose. Their anxiety makes them obsequious and overzealous, thanking their patrons to an irritating degree, but they are also prone to call quits quickly and abruptly- if anything scary or dangerous is on the horizon, or if some better benefactor turns up, they will take their small belongings and leave. And yet, even haunted by this reputation of fickle unreliability, they can always persuade someone else to give them a chance.
Other zebubim are less volatile, but still bogged down by neuroticism. They cling to menial jobs, unable to even ponder the possibility of doing anything else. Whether junk trader, scavenger, butcher-shop custodian, or deliveryman- anything goes, just so long as the future is clear and set.
This self-sabotaging attitude originates in primordial times. In the World Before, the zebubim served as the pages, assistants, and secretaries of the Devils. Beelzebub, in particular, had hundreds of them and kept them in high regard; this gave the fly-people the nickname of the Zebubim, a moniker so successful that it totally erased their original name.
Once the Heavenly War began and the first signs of the Collapse manifested, the fly-people panicked. Some say the nascent mana field overloaded their senses and haywire their minds; others that their inner knowledge of the Diabolic court made them (wrongly) certain of the defeat of their masters. Whatever the reasons, the zebubim defected en masse, fleeting the Diabolical lands in search of safe shelters. There were none: the conflict reached to all corners of the cosmos and the cataclysms caused by the Collapse were soon to follow.
In the Accord, the zebubim were grouped together with the Untamed Tribes, even if they would really love to join the civilized world. They are nationless, living in small communities in the slums of the big cities, some as beggars and others as disparaged workers.
But not all zebubim turned their backs on their masters- some stayed loyally beside the Devils. These zebubim live in Maladomini- the principality of the holy Infernal Empire ruled by the descendants of Saint Beelzebub- to continue their centuries-old vocations as pages, secretaries, and assistants, living in palaces and villas, often charged with the care of the nobility’s cherished three-headed dogs. These flyfolk are notably far less
Some destitute zebubim, fighting their deep-rooted anxieties, will ask their rich “cousins” for a place to live. Maladomini’s zebubim test applicants strictly, usually sending disguised envoys to tempt them. Most of them succeed- if they resist the temptation, they are clearly motivated enough to work in Maladomini.
But some simply can’t resist a cake with whipped cream and vague promises of a better job.
