The zone music pump cleared its due time before asking for a track, and a zone-music change started its track inline with nothing armed behind it. So a start that played nothing left the zone silent until the next change. Any of these did it: no kit for the phase, or a weighted pick landing on a file the install does not ship. The Crossroads (and every area on its kit) ships 1 of its 4 tracks, Alterac Valley's kit 6 of 8, and Everlook's has no night kit.
In the reference, the pump `0x460040` calls the start `0x460240` whenever no stream is live and the due time `[0x836400]` is `-1` or past. The start returns without writing `[0x836400]` on every failure path (`0x46024b`, `0x46025f`, `0x46027b`-`0x460282`, `0x4602a4`), so the next tick retries with a fresh pick (`0x45bb70`). Now:
- `pump_zone_music` spends the deadline only when a stream opened;
- `begin_zone_music` arms a retry (`Some(now)`, the change's `-1`) when neither the intro nor the zone track started;
- a path that cannot play warns once, not once per retry.
`a_pick_that_lands_on_a_missing_file_is_retried_until_one_plays`, `a_zone_change_whose_start_fails_keeps_the_pump_armed` and `a_phase_with_no_kit_stays_armed_until_the_other_phase_has_one` fail without the change. Four more pin the edges: warn once, a started change arms nothing, no row drops the deadline, a failed intro falls through unstamped. Built and gated on macOS.
Fixes#64🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
