i have a little vampire problem and markarth is getting empty... i resurrected the smith, her assistant and both smelter workers once. some playing hours later they have gone again (except for one of the smelter guys), although there was no attack when i was in town. so i used the move to npc command and i ended up in the pink room with a pile of corpses - and three "living" dead, the smith, her assistant and the missing smelter worker...
since the empty city really annoys me, i thought about using the placeatme command but i read that this will actually duplicate the npcs. if those npcs die several times again and i have to revive them like that, will this become a problem after doing it several times? i do not want to mess up the entire save game!
i am wondering what bethesda thought when they implemented random vampire attacks like this... no matter how fast i run, the normal npcs (no soldiers/mercenaries) are dead until i am there

€: how can you make a npc essential? €€: Found it.