Willam Bell is a primary NPC in my city named "New Edinburgh". The notable Mr. Bell (whom I envision looking like the Actor Tobin Bell, along with his characteristic intensity and brooding. Willam is a man of self made means and is a somewhat important figure in the city. His business is to handle maintenance and caretaking of several residential and commercial properties.
However, his reputation is in the handling of rather "special" properties. Those that tend to be troubled as he likes to refer to them. These may be haunted or the sites of horrible activities. They may be hot spots for various and sundry monsters to prefer to collect and antagonize. However, it is his job to keep these places as problem free as they can be. In a city like New Edinburgh, that tends to make for a LOT of properties and not an easy job to do.
Mr. Bell notoriously hires out a lot of work to adventurous types in the area. These are people who tend to be more willing to take on more frightening and even hazardous tasks. They also have a tendency to not have anyone miss them them if they don't show up again. Mr. Bell is not totally without morals, but he tends to be very pragmatic about such things.
Notable among the properties he is caretaker for are 4 haunted mansions, 2 insane asylums, 3 former prisons, 18 houses of more than modest means but perhaps not mansions, and one actual old castle that still is in some limited use by the the Count who has made New Edinburgh his official seat. The Count does not live in the castle, he has a new one for that, but he does conduct business occasionally and some formal ceremonies and services in the old castle which while old, and in the care of Mr. Bell, is not broken down or dilapidated.
The properties in Willam's care are not all always in a negative condition. In fact, most of them are quite benign if troubled at all. This is in large part to to Willam's efforts to keep them properly. However, some of them are perpetually "troubled" to some degree. Mostly due to the nature of their conditions upon coming into his care. They rather refuse to be entirely tamed. He tolerates a certain amount of "naughtiness" in these places as a basis that it likely has never been able to be brought into any lesser state of control.
Two of the prisons and one of the asylums are usually actively "naughty" as he refers to them but to a non-lethal degree, usually. He will not tolerate his employees or visitors being killed wantonly. The third prison and the second asylum are perpetually kept closed down as he cannot seem to get them actively under control enough to prevent people from being killed in them. Yet. He continues to try to tame them as he manages to keep them in running order.
One of the mansions is in the same, latter category of ill repute and has such a reputation as being actively malicious. It particularly seems to dislike Mr. Bell and actively makes the effort to kill him anytime he is there. He always manages to stay one step ahead though. A hard man and a hard man to kill is Mr. Willam Bell.
