Disappearing NPCs

I’m unsure if this is the case, but Skyrim has always had a rare(ish) bug where NPCs will travel away from their town and it can be hard to track them. For me this happened when I’d be completely a certain Dark Brotherhood quest and I’d have to kill a certain daughter in Windhelm, the daughter would be traveling around Skyrim (alive, assumably since the quest objective never showed up as completes). So maybe this is happening to more NPCs in your game, but if it’s rare for a handful of NPCs to do it it’s gotta be even rarer for so many to do it and then die on the roads.
Now if you have mods that would probably be the case too, considering some folks (maybe even most villager NPCs) will run from combat especially against foes far higher leveled than them.
To answer your other question, the NPC in Riften by default has an apprentice, that’s the only reason he was replaced. If the apprentice dies I believe you lose access to that merchant.Is it expected that towns empty out the longer you play? : r/skyrim (reddit.com)
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