Magical gene / lines and strokes

Bracket

Two clusters of hairline near-black stripes with nothing between them - one down the neck, one fanning over the croup - plus a dark muzzle, a dark hoof and a band above it.

What it can come out as

Outcome	Carrying
Bracket	`Brk/Brk` · `Brk/n`
Wild type	`n/n`

How each one is actually drawn - region by region, and the layers it is built from - is on the coding tab.

Crossing two of them

Finding one

About 1 in 1,250 wild horses is born showing this. That is the whole of the supply: catch one, or make one with the carrot below. Breeds set their own pools and a breed built around this gene will carry it far more often than the wild population does.

Wild pair	Shows as	How often
`Brk/Brk`	Bracket	0.004% — 1 in 25,000
`Brk/n`	Bracket	0.076% — 1 in 1,316
`n/n`	Wild type	99.92%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/bracket.json — a data-driven gene, not a Java class. It is listed in the index.json beside it and registered by Genes' class initialiser at startup.

Key	`horsegenetics.bracket`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	365 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Brk` · `n`
Varies per horse	2 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built from	AXIS, PARTS, STROKES, TOWARD

What it paints

Each outcome, described the way the gene file describes it, and then the layers that draw it in the order they are painted. The prose is the part a reader checks a bake against; the list underneath is what the engine actually did.

Bracket

Extremely thin stripes, blunt at the top and sharply pointed at the bottom, some of them forking near the point - a hairline pen rather than a brush. Five to ten come down the side of the neck, curving back as they fall; six to twelve more fan out over the hip and croup, near-vertical at the front and swinging back toward the tail. The barrel, shoulder and flank carry none at all - the gap between the two clusters is as much a part of the marking as the stripes are. A dark muzzle, a dark hoof and a narrow band above it complete it.

the neck cluster — STROKES × AXIS, painted with TOWARD
the croup cluster, fanning back — STROKES × AXIS × AXIS, painted with TOWARD
a dark band above the hoof, and the hoof below it — AXIS, painted with TOWARD
the muzzle — PARTS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No bracket striping.

Paints nothing.