Magical gene / ground and strong white

Tribal Ward

A painted ward - coiled swirls at hip and shoulder, chevrons down the back, bands round the neck and rings round the legs, laid straight onto the horse's own colour. 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
Tribal WardTwd/Twd · Twd/Twc · Twd/n · Twd/Twk
Tribal Ward, blackTwk/Twk · Twk/Twc · Twk/n
Tribal Ward, colouredTwc/Twc
Wild typeTwc/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 3,572 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
Twd/TwdTribal Ward0.001% — 1 in 100,000
Twd/TwkTribal Ward0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
Twd/TwcTribal Ward0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
Twd/nTribal Ward0.019% — 1 in 5,263
Twk/TwkTribal Ward, black0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
Twk/TwcTribal Ward, black0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
Twk/nTribal Ward, black0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
Twc/TwcTribal Ward, coloured0.0013% — 1 in 75,019
n/nWild type99.972%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/tribal_ward.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.tribal_ward
Phasemagical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority220 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order
AllelesTwd · Twk · Twc · n
Varies per horse8 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built fromAXIS, SPIRAL, TOWARD, WAVES

Why it is built this way

Imported from the magic-gene intake, 2026-09-08. The bare throat and chest are subtracted out of the ground rather than painted back over it, so what shows through is whatever the horse actually is - a bay reveals bay, a grey reveals grey. Painting them back would have needed a colour, and any colour would have been a lie about the horse underneath.

SPIRAL draws one spiral per named part, so 'a swirl at each hip and each shoulder' is two layers at different offsets along the body rather than four placements. On a bake the pair reads as hip and shoulder; it is not four independent motifs.

The pale ground was removed (owner's call). It is worth knowing that this layer is the one the invert/parts fix of 2026-09-08 briefly deleted and then restored, because the restore is what made it visible enough to judge - and the judgement was that the ward reads better as paint on a horse than as paint on a white field.

The old note here said the ink stays black because 'it is the ink that makes it a ward', and the coloured allele varied the pale ground instead. With the ground gone that reasoning left the allele with nothing at all to do - the two expressions came out identical - so the ink is what varies now. The earlier argument was about a design that no longer exists rather than about the ink.

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 Twk 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.

Tribal Ward

The ward inked straight onto the horse in near-black - swirls at hip and shoulder, chevrons down the back, bands round the neck and rings round the legs.

  1. a coiled swirl at each hip — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  2. a smaller one at each shoulder — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  3. chevrons banded down the back — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  4. bands round the neck — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  5. rings round the legs — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Tribal Ward, black

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

  1. a coiled swirl at each hip — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  2. a smaller one at each shoulder — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  3. chevrons banded down the back — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  4. bands round the neck — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  5. rings round the legs — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Tribal Ward, coloured

The same ward inked in a colour the line carries. Fully recessive: it takes two copies, and a single one beside the black allele inks black.

The ink stays black in this form on purpose. Both the ground and the ink taking the same hue made a horse that looked like one wash rather than like something painted on.

  1. a coiled swirl at each hip — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  2. a smaller one at each shoulder — SPIRAL, painted with TOWARD
  3. chevrons banded down the back — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  4. bands round the neck — WAVES, painted with TOWARD
  5. rings round the legs — AXIS × AXIS × AXIS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

No ward.

Paints nothing.