This is kind of annoying, but on both the "These Boots Were Made For Walking" and "A Strange Black Rock" Heritage quest, the quest giving NPC's (Hwal Rucksif and Scholar Al-Quylar) completely disappeared when I had to return to them for a quest update. For Hwal I would log out and log back in, and he returns. Scholar, though, I logged out and logged back in and he's not standing behind the tower of Oracles like he's supposed to. I remember these bugs years ago, any reason why they're not fixed yet?
Update - After a second log out/login the Scholar finally came back. Still, this is something that would be nice for you to fix SOE peeps. Good job on the game, still love it after all these years, but this bug is sorta annoying.
What is actually happening is graphically the NPC is sinking into the landscape. This is most obvious doing the Gfay HQ In Honor and Service where RK Irontoe can be seen from the acorn lift appearing to be standing by the stables just past the druid ring when he is supposed to be up on the platform above. The workaround for the sunk into landscape npc's is to use /target <name of npc> and then your Hail button. This will make the npc arise from the dirt right in front of your very own eyes!! (dang necromancerery abounds, tis black magic I say!)
I'm glad you were able to find the Scholar. I would suggest sending a /bug report to the dev's so they can look over it.
