Thanks for all those who tried it and posted the recipe!
As far as the bug report goes: they closed it
WTF. Worse yet, it was closed based on "iBot" analyzing the logs I provided and deciding that everything was fine. Here's what it said:
Apple Developer Relations
September 27 2018, 2:00 PM
This is not a failure: ----- iBot Summary of [Logs.zip/install.log] ----- Install Assistant prepared the installation successfully. osishelperd stashed successfully. The OSInstaller began installation of 17G65. The installation was successful. OSInstaller stashed successfully. The system successfully booted 17G65.
Please file a new bug report for any remaining issues with installing 10.14. We are closing this bug report. If you have questions regarding the resolution of this issue, please update your bug report with that information.
I responded and will post on the thread if a human appears to respond instead of "iBot"