A guest promoted to host while its player was detached — mid-reload, in the lobby, between episodes — took the room over with no epoch: the coordinator could not answer state requests, and when the player rebound it opened a fresh epoch that resumed a paused room, reset the room rate to the new host's saved speed, and published the reload position as the room's timeline. Separately, commands issued under the previous role kept landing after the role changed: a guest's end-of-file hard seek still played the player after promotion, leaving the new host broadcasting a moving position while gating on peers, and a demoted host's rate continuation still reported a room rate change.
The host coordinator now adopts the room — epoch identity, rate, intent, phase, and the inherited anchor — the moment the role changes, whether or not a player is bound; a player bound later for the same media rebinds into that epoch and keeps its pause, rate, and timeline. Authority over the player is a per-engine generation, revoked before every role change, epoch change, detach, and disposal, and every asynchronous follow-up captures and re-checks it; the attachment's acknowledgement ledger still survives role swaps, and the coordinator now watches consumed acks so a play its predecessor set in motion cannot run under a stopped room. The reconciler ends its epoch when the host leaves the player, so a promotion after that adopts nothing.
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