@zetsuravez holly, shadow, hibineko and the pkers were all payers that died in the deathgame and woke up in this world.
hameln
is on of the pkers that is responsible for the death of shins wife. schnee didn't told shin about them because she don't want him to turn cold again. these are also not the only players we will meet.
they are players who died in the game and somehow ended up in the new world. the same happened to the PKs. the author made sure to mention it if they are a support character (a.k.a NPC)
afaik, most support characters have died from old age
exception is for those from a long-lived races like schnee and ziralt's right hand man (tortoise beastman)
ziralt is practically a living fossil by the time he reunited with shin
because unlike players that woke up several hundred years later, the support chars continued living directly after shin beat origin
@Uxtef hey just a question, would it be possible to like stick close to the translations of the novel? Like Hameln instead of Harmelun? Rashugum instead of Rashgum
ATTENTION REAL SPOILER
as to why Hameln is actually better, is because of the tale ''The Rat-Catcher of Hamelin'' it is a german tale and the town it plays in is called ''Hameln'' in german. The rat catcher of Hamelin was using a flute to gather all the rats. The Hameln in TNG was using various items to make monster raids/invasions happen (monster PK).