Pantah

To be fair, while it may be obvious to some, not everyone can loot at something like this and instantly understand what happened. Figured I'd go into detail for those who could use the explanation. Most any mechanic will get it right away.

Far as the fork is concerned, I the aluminum half of the fork has been perfectly fine so far. no signs of cracks or imminent failure of the bonding agent for the dropouts, though the latter can admittedly be almost impossible to catch before it happens.
It is, ironically, the steel part which gave me grief, though not due to it being steel. Still, getting a steel fork has crossed my mind and is one of many options on the table. That being said, I'm also entertaining the thought of going with a carbon fork, regardless of the ire it would bring to the C&V crowd. I think a carbon fork would be perfectly at home on this bike. Gary Klein was ever the innovator and not one to go with convention so it'd be fitting.

Again, just one of many possibilities. I'll update this when I figure out the solution. I'm doing a metric century in a month, Levi's Gran Fondo, and I REALLY want to do it on this bike, so that's my preferred timeline to get this sorted. I do have another, slightly newer carbon road bike I can use but it's not as comfortable on longer rides due to the handlebars being lower a couple other geometry differences.