I am playing Dawnguard and sided with Dawnguard against the vampires. I am working on the Prophet quest where I am looking for the moth priest. I go to dragon bridge and ask the guard, he says to follow the path south. I do and my quest updates to examine the scene of the battle. However, the quest arrow does not point to anything but the ground with nothing around it.

"Alright" I say to myself. "I'll just do the research myself. And find what I need to do."

So I look around, and continue south. I then find the wagon with two dead people (redguard and nord) across a nearby small bridge. However, nothing I do furthers the quest. Online I find that there should be a nearby dead vampire that holds a note that I need to read to continue the quest. After searching for several minutes all around the wagon, I find no vampire. I do not think that there is any nearby vampire at all.

How can I continue this quest if there is no nearby vampire to get a note off to continue the quest? Did I simply miss the vampire? Where is the vampire exactly so I can check? Thanks.

to the road leading south of dragon's bridge, if you walk on it for a while you'll see an overturned cart. What you'll need to do is get some kind of note or journal off of it, read it, and it will lead you to the moth priests' location.

I believe I did that. I go south of Dragon bridge, my quest updates saying I need to examine the cart/wagon whatever. There is no cart where the map marker points to. If I go even further south a few hundred feet or so, past another, smaller bridge I come across a cart (it is not turned over), but it is clear it was attacked. There are two dead bodies nearby (within 10 feet of the cart) and only two bodies. One is a redguard woman and the other is a male nord. There is no vampire nearby. I am not sure if this cart has nothing to do with the quest or not, because there is no map marker pointing to this, but it is rather near where the map marker is pointing. However, there is no vampire nearby, at all. I checked for over five minutes all over the place, even using the console to see if I missed anything (tcl), nothing that I can see.

Is the cart supposed to be overturned and near the map marker? Is the vampire with the note supposed to be in the immediate area? How can I do this quest if I cannot find the note? Will reloading an earlier save fix this (I did try a load from about ten minutes earlier no luck, the save before that is several house ago, so I would only like to use that as a last resort).

You probably have to reload that older save, yes. The overturned cart with the dead vampire and the note should be where the map marker is pointing, so this is definitely a glitch.

The Redgaurd women and cart past the second bridge are from vanilla Skyrim. The cart you are looking for is just before the second bridge. If there is not a cart there, then somehow the quest failed to update properly. (The cart with the vampire only shows up after the Prophet quest begins.) Since you are on the PC I would use the console to setstage 40

Try asking the cart driver first, before you speak to the guard at Dragon Bridge. I believe that's the order you have to do the quest.

It will work if you go right to a guard. I just did it, skipped the entire carriage driver/inn keeper thing.

I just reloaded my earlier save and as quickly as I could got back to the quest Prophet. I did everything up to the point of the cart, but it is still not there. I do not think reloading earlier saves is the right answer because it did not seem to work, and I do not think going even further back will do anything. The only thing I can think of is that my file is corrupt, or that a mod is conflicting somehow. I do not know what mod would do this, we will just have to see. Maybe I will wait for a patch or something.

Sorry I gave wrong advice, don't know how to delete post.

I think a mod must be interfering. If you got all the way to the cart with the redguard women you would have seen the Moth Priest cart along the way, that is, if it was there to be seen.