I got repeatedly quests from 2 guilds I just could not do, because I had no forge or alchemy lab yet.  So, that is why I cannot finish that quest yet. And I read on the wiki the pay installments only got higher (total of 4 payments and that was a way to also finish the quest), not an auto game over.

Still, thanks for pointing that out. I guess I need to go back... or is there  away to modify the save file to set back the date a bit?