Magical gene / lines and strokes

Filigree

White metalwork over the muscle masses - long arcs following the body's contours and broken tracks of short dashes between them - carrying onto the head and legs as a hairline. A third allele carries the same marking worked in greys instead of white - dark where the pale form is light, and the same number of steps.

What it can come out as

OutcomeCarrying
FiligreeFlg/Flg · Flg/Flc · Flg/n · Flg/Flk
Black filigreeFlk/Flk · Flk/Flc · Flk/n
Coloured filigreeFlc/Flc
Wild typeFlc/n · 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 1,786 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 pairShows asHow often
Flg/FlgFiligree0.002% — 1 in 50,000
Flg/FlkFiligree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Flg/FlcFiligree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Flg/nFiligree0.038% — 1 in 2,632
Flk/FlkBlack filigree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Flk/FlcBlack filigree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Flk/nBlack filigree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Flc/FlcColoured filigree0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
n/nWild type99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/filigree.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.

Keyhorsegenetics.filigree
Phasemagical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority367 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order
AllelesFlg · Flk · Flc · n
Varies per horse3 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built fromAXIS, PARTS, SPECKLE, STROKES, TOWARD

Why it is built this way

The black allele is the white one with the light taken out of it, and it sits one rung under white in the dominance series - so every combination that existed before it keeps the outcome it had, and only the pairs carrying Flk are new. The re-toning is a mapping rather than a repaint: every achromatic target moves into the dark end of the scale keeping its order and its spacing, and every SATURATED one is left alone, because that colour is the gene rather than its lightness.

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.

Filigree

Two element forms at once, both hard-edged and both the same white: long shallow arcs following the contour of the zone they sit in, and fields of short dashes lying parallel to the nearest arc, in broken tracks. The dashes crowd along the topline and the back edges of the shoulder and thin out below. The same tracery carries onto the head and all four legs - swirls and dashes there too, not a flat field - but drawn much finer, a hairline rather than a band, so a face reads as engraved rather than as painted.

  1. long arcs along the contours — STROKES, painted with TOWARD
  2. dash fields between and along the arcs — STROKES × SPECKLE × AXIS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the same work at a hairline, down the legs and over the head — AXIS × PARTS × STROKES, painted with TOWARD

Black filigree

The same marking as the white form with the light taken out of it: a single near-black tone.

  1. long arcs along the contours — STROKES, painted with TOWARD
  2. dash fields between and along the arcs — STROKES × SPECKLE × AXIS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the same work at a hairline, down the legs and over the head — AXIS × PARTS × STROKES, painted with TOWARD

Coloured filigree

The same metalwork worked in a colour rather than in white - the shade runs in a line of horses. Fully recessive: two copies, and a single copy beside the white allele shows white. It never gives blue eyes.

  1. long coloured arcs along the contours — STROKES, painted with TOWARD
  2. coloured dash fields between the arcs — STROKES × SPECKLE × AXIS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the same work at a hairline, down the legs and over the head — AXIS × PARTS × STROKES, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No filigree.

Paints nothing.