Yeah, now that I've completed a bounty correctly I think I see the problem. The task was to get a character to abandon their research and the way I ended up approaching it was to use a dreamscape to influence their decision. When I went back to the location, they were gone. So the narrator kind of acknowledged I succeeded but because it happened "off-camera" while the NPC wasn't in focus, I guess it didn't satisfy the bounty requirements.
Which is unfortunate because the fact that interacting through a dream that way kinda-sorta worked is actually really impressive.