Magical gene / speckle and dust

Stars

A scatter of small pale points densest right along the back and the crest of the neck, thinning down the sides and gone by the belly and the knee.

What it can come out as

Outcome	Carrying
Stars	`Sta/Sta` · `Sta/Stc` · `Sta/n`
Coloured Stars	`Stc/Stc`
Wild type	`Stc/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 893 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
`Sta/Sta`	Stars	0.004% — 1 in 25,000
`Sta/Stc`	Stars	0.016% — 1 in 6,250
`Sta/n`	Stars	0.076% — 1 in 1,316
`Stc/Stc`	Coloured Stars	0.016% — 1 in 6,250
`n/n`	Wild type	99.888%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/stars.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.stars`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	330 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Sta` · `Stc` · `n`
Varies per horse	5 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built from	AXIS, NOISE, SPOTS, 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.

Stars

Small hard-edged points, most of them round and a few drawn out into a short cross. They are thickest right along the topline - the dorsal third of the barrel, the croup, and the crest of the neck rather than the whole upper half of it - and thin steadily going down, out to nothing by the belly and by the knee and hock. They clump on top of that: a starred horse has three or four patches where the points crowd, not an even dusting.

points thickest along the back and the crest, gone by the belly and the knee — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × NOISE × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
the few that are drawn out into a cross — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Coloured Stars

The same marking 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.

points thickest along the back and the crest, gone by the belly and the knee, in colour — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × NOISE × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
the few that are drawn out into a cross, in colour — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × AXIS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No stars.

Paints nothing.