Magical gene / ground and strong white

Qular

White over most of the horse, left open in straight-sided polygons of coat separated by even white channels - a giraffe read backwards, with the mane untouched. 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
QularQul/Qul · Qul/Quc · Qul/n · Qul/Quk
Black QularQuk/Quk · Quk/Quc · Quk/n
Coloured QularQuc/Quc
Wild typeQuc/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
Qul/QulQular0.002% — 1 in 50,000
Qul/QukQular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Qul/QucQular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Qul/nQular0.038% — 1 in 2,632
Quk/QukBlack Qular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Quk/QucBlack Qular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Quk/nBlack Qular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Quc/QucColoured Qular0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
n/nWild type99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/qular.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.qular
Phasemagical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority200 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order
AllelesQul · Quk · Quc · n
Varies per horse5 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built fromAXIS, CRACKLE, PARTS, 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 Quk 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.

Qular

Nearly the whole horse goes white, and what is left of the coat reads as panels laid on top of it rather than as gaps cut out - big irregular polygons with straight sides and corners that meet three at a time, scattered over the neck, shoulder, ribcage, barrel, hindquarter and upper legs. Between them runs an even white channel a finger or two wide, which is what makes it a giraffe rather than a paint. The head is mostly white with panels round the eyes and muzzle; the lower legs keep a dark boot. Every panel edge is crisp - how big the panels are and how wide the channels between them run varies a great deal from horse to horse, but none of them feathers. The mane and tail are not touched by any of it.

  1. white over almost the whole horse — PARTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the giraffe panels the white is left out of — CRACKLE, painted with TOWARD
  3. the dark boot the white is left out of — AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Black Qular

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

  1. white over almost the whole horse — PARTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the giraffe panels the white is left out of — CRACKLE, painted with TOWARD
  3. the dark boot the white is left out of — AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Coloured Qular

The same panelling, with the ground in a colour the line carries rather than in white. 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.

  1. white over almost the whole horse, in colour — PARTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the giraffe panels the white is left out of, in colour — CRACKLE, painted with TOWARD
  3. the dark boot the white is left out of, in colour — AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No panelling.

Paints nothing.