Magical gene / spots and rings

Pavonem

Peacock eyes - a dark pupil inside a ring of bare coat inside a broad faint leaf, upright and a little taller than wide, with ordinary spots scattered around them. 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
Pavonem	`Pv/Pv` · `Pv/Pvc` · `Pv/n` · `Pv/Pvk`
Black Pavonem	`Pvk/Pvk` · `Pvk/Pvc` · `Pvk/n`
Coloured Pavonem	`Pvc/Pvc`
Wild type	`Pvc/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
`Pv/Pv`	Pavonem	0.002% — 1 in 50,000
`Pv/Pvk`	Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Pv/Pvc`	Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Pv/n`	Pavonem	0.038% — 1 in 2,632
`Pvk/Pvk`	Black Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Pvk/Pvc`	Black Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Pvk/n`	Black Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`Pvc/Pvc`	Coloured Pavonem	0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
`n/n`	Wild type	99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/pavonem.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.pavonem`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	310 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Pv` · `Pvk` · `Pvc` · `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	SPOTS, 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 Pvk 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.

The white form was regraded at the same time. It spanned a much narrower range of lightness than the coloured form did - the same layers the coloured form separates were all landing on off-white - so its tones now follow the coloured form's own per-layer ordering, in greys. All three forms carry the same number of steps.

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.

Pavonem

Peacock eyes, and built the way one is: a small dark pupil, a ring of the horse's own coat around it left completely alone, and a broad outer leaf around that - each zone about a fifth, a half and the whole of the width, and every one of them a little taller than it is wide. The ring is the part that makes it read: paint the middle and it stops being an eye and becomes a spot. The leaf is the same colour as the pupil but much weaker, so the three zones go strong, bare, faint from the centre out. It is never alone - ordinary small spots always ring the eyes - and it works on any base, stacking happily with tobiano and the rest.

the outer leaf, with the eye left out of it — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD
the pupil at the centre of the eye — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
the ordinary spots that always surround them — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Black Pavonem

The same marking as the white form with the light taken out of it: the same 3 steps, moved to the dark end of the scale.

the outer leaf, with the eye left out of it — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD
the pupil at the centre of the eye — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
the ordinary spots that always surround them — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Coloured Pavonem

The same eyes in a colour the line carries: the pupil at full saturation, the outer leaf in a washed-out version of it, and the horse's own coat between them. Fully recessive - it takes two copies, and a single copy beside the white allele shows white. It never gives blue eyes, whatever the white form does.

the outer leaf, with the eye left out of it, in colour — SPOTS × SPOTS inverted, painted with TOWARD
the pupil at the centre of the eye, in colour — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
the ordinary spots that always surround them, in colour — SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No eyes.

Paints nothing.