Magical gene / speckle and dust

Speckling

Fine coloured speckles scattered over the coat and hooves to match - one colour with a single copy, two with a pair. Half a dozen other markings are described in terms of it.

What it can come out as

Outcome	Carrying
Two-colour speckling	`Spk/Spk`
One-colour speckling	`Spk/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 833 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
`Spk/Spk`	Two-colour speckling	0.006% — 1 in 16,667
`Spk/n`	One-colour speckling	0.114% — 1 in 877
`n/n`	Wild type	99.88%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/speckling.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.speckling`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	340 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Spk` · `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	AXIS, NOISE, SPECKLE, 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.

Two-colour speckling

Two copies bring a second hue in alongside the first, mixed through the same field rather than divided from it, and the hooves take the leading colour.

the first colour — SPECKLE, painted with TOWARD
the second colour through the same field — SPECKLE × NOISE, painted with TOWARD
hooves in the leading colour — AXIS, painted with TOWARD

One-colour speckling

A single copy gives one hue, scattered as fine points over the body, neck, head and legs - drifting into denser and thinner areas rather than lying evenly - with the hooves in the same colour.

the speckles — SPECKLE, painted with TOWARD
hooves to match — AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No speckling.

Paints nothing.