I went into the Thistlewood area after getting the quest to kill the bandits there, and merrily slaughtered my way through most of them - but when I got to the back of the camp, I was low on health/essence, and sort of panicked at the spawn of Callaran and his goons - so instead of fighting them, I threw up a few disposable meatshields and ran for the zone border.
Unfortunately, this seems to have bugged the game for me, because when I returned to the zone, Callaran was gone. I've read Berenhold's letter in the box, but without Callaran dead the Sergeant doesn't seem to recognize that I have completed her quest and I can't progress to the next step. Is there any way to fix this? A flag I can reset in one of the script files or something?