Magical gene / spots and rings

Painted Lady Wingmark

A butterfly wing laid over the barrel - a soft-edged field crossed by veins and rimmed in dark. 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

Outcome	Carrying
Painted Lady Wingmark	`Plw/Plw` · `Plw/Plc` · `Plw/n` · `Plw/Plk`
Painted Lady Wingmark, black	`Plk/Plk` · `Plk/Plc` · `Plk/n`
Painted Lady Wingmark, coloured	`Plc/Plc`
Wild type	`Plc/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 pair	Shows as	How often
`Plw/Plw`	Painted Lady Wingmark	0.002% — 1 in 50,000
`Plw/Plk`	Painted Lady Wingmark	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Plw/Plc`	Painted Lady Wingmark	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Plw/n`	Painted Lady Wingmark	0.038% — 1 in 2,632
`Plk/Plk`	Painted Lady Wingmark, black	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Plk/Plc`	Painted Lady Wingmark, black	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Plk/n`	Painted Lady Wingmark, black	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Plc/Plc`	Painted Lady Wingmark, coloured	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`n/n`	Wild type	99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/painted_lady_wing.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.painted_lady_wing`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	318 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Plw` · `Plk` · `Plc` · `n`
Varies per horse	7 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built from	CRACKLE, SPOTS, TOWARD

Why it is built this way

Imported from the magic-gene intake, 2026-09-08. The wing, its veins and its rim are the same mirrored spot field read three times, so the veins cannot run off the wing and the rim cannot come adrift from it. The source placed the wing at an explicit centre; a mirrored SPOTS field with the spacing set near the barrel's length is the addressable version of that, and it means WHERE it lands is down to the seed.

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 Plk 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.

Painted Lady Wingmark

The wing, its veins and its rim are all the same mirrored spot field, read three times - so the veins cannot run off the wing and the rim cannot come adrift from it. The rim is the wing with a smaller copy of itself subtracted, which is the same trick every rim in this mod uses.

the wing itself — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
veins across it — SPOTS × CRACKLE inverted, painted with TOWARD
and a dark rim round its edge — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD

Painted Lady Wingmark, black

The same marking as the white form with the light taken out of it: the same 2 steps, moved to the dark end of the scale.

the wing itself — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
veins across it — SPOTS × CRACKLE inverted, painted with TOWARD
and a dark rim round its edge — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD

Painted Lady Wingmark, coloured

The same wing in a colour the line carries, still rimmed and veined in dark. Fully recessive.

the wing itself — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
veins across it — SPOTS × CRACKLE inverted, painted with TOWARD
and a dark rim round its edge — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No wingmark.

Paints nothing.