So! I appreciate questions. This movie was heavily inspired by a movie called big fish and begonia. Which is a Chinese movie. The characters in the movie are spirits of some sort. They are all capable of basic nature magic such as helping plants grow and what not, but as they get older, their magic becomes more specialized. I wanted to take the same concepts here as well. So now that our characters are older and old enough to start learning their specializations, most drift away from nature magic. There are roles like the soul collector and other things of that nature but these people are often lesser spirits given the title of an ethereal. I think someone had an idea to be a keeper of the town. Like he does the upkeep on the trains and the roads. So his powers would pertain to such things. The curse forces the ethereals to stay inside their small village. There's an invisible field around it that acts as a border to keep them in. Humans can enter, but rarely do. When humans do enter, it looks like a ghost town, and the inhabitants look like monsters regardless of how beautiful they appear to each other. To leave the barrier, it needs either be broken by the witches who cast the curse or you need an object from the human world. But if you choose the latter option, you won't be able to reenter the barrier. These ethereals have had no contact with humans. But have grown up hearing the stories about how heartless humans are. It's also kind of like Atlantis where they're trapped and even though there are children and stuff, its no secret they're a dying people.