The Dark Reach, translated from the STF Standard Skelow name for it (also translatable as the Black Reach), is a region of the main galactic disk east of the central STF sectors which is largely devoid of stars, spatial anchors, and hyperspace portals. What paths have been made are long, turbulent, prone to collapsing, and all dead ends. The Reach can be found chiefly beyond the Verrantin and Den'omu Sectors to their galactic east, coreward of the bulk of the Machine Sector, and likely continues to extend coreward east of the Klutch Sector. It acts as a break, even a kind of protective buffer, between the STF and the Akeck and Praezorians, and it is the chief reason why the civilizations have not come into contact with one another.
In the Dark Reach, hyperspace is particularly violent and inimical to the existence of real space matter, and it is easy to slip into higher bands of hyperspace there. Particularly brave Skelow starfarers and cartographers have disappeared in the Reach, the victims of collapsing pathways, violent portals, hyperspace phenomena, or thrown thousands of lightyears across the Milky Way.