Thanks for the suggestions, but the root cause appears to be something else entirely, which I'm still working to identify.
Additional notes/observations:
(client is RoF2)
1) questerrors command returns nothing
2) zone log indicates Perl event export settings and quests load successfully
[07-01-2019 :: 23:57:22] [Zone Server] Loading Perl Event Export Settings...
[07-01-2019 :: 23:57:22] [MySQL Query] SELECT event_id, event_description, export_qglobals, export_mob, export_zone, export_item, export_event FROM perl_event_export_settings ORDER BY event_id (84 rows returned)
[07-01-2019 :: 23:57:22] [Zone Server] Loading quests
[07-01-2019 :: 23:57:22] [Zone Server] Entering sleep mode
3) eqemu /quests folder is comprised of clone from
https://github.com/ProjectEQ/projecteqquests
4) rather than cloning from the repo in (3), creation of /quests, /plugins, /lua, /lua_modules, /scripts, /shared and other defaults have been managed via eqemu_server.pl
5) verified the appropriate quest scripts for current zone are read on zone-in (quest_parser_collection, etc.)
At this point, I welcome any other suggestions.