Magical gene / colour modifiers

Opalized

The same substrate as Voided taken the other way - a marking comes out as iridescent cells of three to seven hues, pearlescent at the rim and strongest in the middle. Which marking depends on the allele: one opalizes every white region, the other every black one.

What it can come out as

Outcome	Carrying
Opalized	`Opl/Opl` · `Opl/Opb` · `Opl/n`
Black-opalized	`Opb/Opb` · `Opb/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 1,786 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 pair	Shows as	How often
`Opl/Opl`	Opalized	0.002% — 1 in 50,000
`Opl/Opb`	Opalized	0.0053% — 1 in 18,751
`Opl/n`	Opalized	0.038% — 1 in 2,632
`Opb/Opb`	Black-opalized	0.0053% — 1 in 18,751
`Opb/n`	Black-opalized	0.0053% — 1 in 18,751
`n/n`	Wild type	99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/opalized.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.opalized`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	609 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Opl` · `Opb` · `n`
Varies per horse	4 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built from	LUMA, PALETTE, PIGMENT, 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.

Opalized

Every white region on the horse. The outline is the source pattern's, unchanged, but the inside is not uniform. It breaks into irregular lobed cells of differing colour, a hand's breadth or two across, with soft transitions between neighbours - so it reads as iridescence rather than as a gradient. The cells crowd at the core of a marking and thin toward its perimeter, and the outer inch or two trends pale and low-saturation, near pearl. Three to seven hues are present at once on any one horse: pale blues, mints, lilacs and pearl teals at the light end, reds, oranges, ambers and magentas at the dark.

the white regions, broken into hue cells — LUMA, painted with PALETTE
the pearlescent rim — LUMA × LUMA, painted with TOWARD

Black-opalized

The identical iridescence, taken to the other end of the coat: every region the horse wears at its blackest - a black point, a sooty field, the dark half of a bay, the black of a tobiano rather than its white - breaks into the same lobed cells of three to seven hues, pearlescent at the rim and strongest in the middle. On a horse with nothing black on it, it shows nothing, exactly as the white form shows nothing on a horse with no white. Recessive to the white form: it takes two copies, or one beside a wild type.

the black regions, broken into hue cells — PIGMENT, painted with PALETTE
the pearlescent rim — PIGMENT × PIGMENT, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

Neither. White stays white and black stays black.

Paints nothing.