The Scab

The Scab is a notorious slipspace anomaly located in the Lurone Sector of the Vela-Scorpius Quadrant.

Best described as a form of storm, the Scab is plagued by strong currents that spin outwards in an anti-clockwise fashion. These currents already provide a hazard by placing strain on translight engines as they fight through it, and to-date the tides in the core have never been officially breached. Due to their dimensional proximity to realspace, asteroids and captured debris litter the Scab, forcing ships to slow down to avoid collisions. Ships must make regular small jumps when navigating this region, both for maintenance reasons and optimizing their route.

Because it was densely-inhabited, at least by anomaly standards, the Scab has been quite thoroughly mapped, and by the 26th century was closely monitored by the CAA's (later the Phoenix Initiative's) regional traffic authority. Civilian captains can access daily reports on slipspace conditions to pre-plan their journeys, with some using this information to plot a shortcut known as Capello's Sprint. Supposedly systems of concern are routinely patrolled by rescue ships, yet even before the Human-Covenant War, the fleet wasn't large enough to safeguard all but the most noteworthy black spots and the primary sliplane through it. Worse, despite the official recommendation being to travel in a convoy, most travel alone and are subsequently preyed upon by pirates and insurgents.

Like most other anomalies of its type, the mechanisms that power the Scab are still presently unknown to physicists. There is no doubt it is natural - its structure is too intricately linked with larger slipspace currents to be artificially created. Nor did it form within the Human Sphere, as records show that it has moved in a coreward-trailing direction. This places it on a collision course with Herbert's Clog, where both are predicted to merge together within the next 500,000 years.

Key locations

 * Gamma Mensae system
 * Campbell's Landing