I don't know if there is some reason for this, so I'll just lay it out.
When you take the dagger back to Harnquist and relay the request to modify the blade, Harnquist directs you to Edrich if you want to collect some delivery and bring it back.
Going to Edrich, you are told that the parcel will come in at a later time.
So, if a PC were to simply wait until that time has lapsed, then return to Edrich, there probably should be some node there, but there isn't.
It's not too difficult to return to Harnquist, and in fact as you need to return to Harnquist anyway -- being that his delivery from Edrich isn't of any interest to you toward the end of the quest -- I can see how this could've been overlooked.
Mostly, I suppose this is at least this is merely a little confusing, and probably at worst nothing more than frustrating.
The biggest concern I have is if this sort of thing occurs in other quest chains. When the player could reasonably think that a node should exist somewhere, and it doesn't, it leads to a few possible reactions (which are not entirely exclusive, either):
- Is there a bug?
- Did I do something wrong?
- What now should I expect? Should I try to play the designers, or the PlaneShift world?
- If I'm stuck, what do I miss if I simply scrap the endeavor?
Usually, the more information a player character can gather, the better. It needn't be a straightforward way to gather that information, but that requires interaction mechanics that most people would expect from a puzzle game, and so then you have a typical case of genre-blindness. Et c.
Especially when one of ol' Harns' responses is to ignore the PC (upon telling him that the delivery hasn't yet arrived), I hope this doesn't seem overly petulant.
EDIT: I also don't want to come-off as ignorant: I'm not saying that those points haven't been considered already, as much as laying-out my own reasoning so that this looks like less of a complaint and more of a useful critique.