Why would he send you to his only business rival for miles?
I agree with you there, but he could recommend somebody in an unrelated or complementary position, within Hydlaa. For example, Harn would probably feel pretty good about himself if he sent somebody over to the tavern to help out. It wouldn't hurt his business any, would still help someone else, and might give him some points with the staff there ("Hey Harn! Thanks for sending that kid over here, we really needed the help today!")
Only people who are likely to care would bother doing that for you though, and the more malicious ones might try sending you miles out of your way to somebody who's unlikely to give you a task at all.
Were the above implemented, another thing that could be done later would be to have the database store a "bulletin board" for the NPCs, so that Harn would actually be aware that such-and-such person is looking for an errand boy. That would be more finicky to implement though, and you'd have to make sure that they only know what they ought to know (as opposed to knowing about some irrelevant little errand on the complete other end of Yliakum...)
I don't actually foresee that being implemented. Just adding some clouds for the brainstorms.
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