Janks was a male Phindian who served as a crew member on the smuggling vessel known as the Uhumele following the Clone Wars. On the ship he served as an assistant to the chief engineer, a Tintinna named Meekerdin-maa, and also cooked for the crew. In 19 BBY a month after the Declaration of a New Order by Galactic Emperor Palpatine, Janks and his crewmates were trapped on the planet of New Plympto due to an Imperial quarantine. While stuck, the group were joined by Jedi General Dass Jennir and a local Nosaurian, Bomo Greenbark. With the pair's aid, the Uhumele escaped from New Plympto, after which Janks and the crew agreed to help Greenbark find his enslaved family. First traveling to the slave-world of Orvax IV, they learned that Greenbark's wife was dead but that his daughter, Resa, had been sold and was on the planet Esseles.
Janks and the crew then traveled to Esseles, where they attacked the villa in which the man who bought Greenbark's daughter lived. During the attack, Janks helped disable the villa's security droids but the Uhumele's crew were too late, as Dezono Qua, the man who had purchased Resa had eaten her shortly before the assault. Jennir shot Qua, but parted ways with Janks and company after they discovered that he was a Jedi. The Uhumele then traveled to the planet Pizkoss for supplies, but while there Janks was arrested by Imperial Stormtroopers. The Phindian was incarcerated first on a Star Destroyer, then in Imperial Prison ISO-L8, where he was interrogated by Darth Vader concerning his old crewmates. Some time after Vader visited, the assassin Falco Sang found Janks and killed him for his part in Qua's death.
The male Phindian Janks lived during the final decades of the Galactic Republic and through the Clone Wars that marked their end. By 19 BBY, the year in which the War did finish, Janks had joined the crew of a Maka-Eekai L4000 transport named the Uhumele, working as an assistant to its technician Meekerdin-maa. The ship and its crew, captained by a Yarkora named Schurk-Heren, were on the planet of New Plympto one month after the Declaration of a New Order by the newly appointed Galactic Emperor Palpatine. On New Plympto, the Uhumele was landed in a spaceport in an area known as Cadgel Meadows, where they became grounded by forces belonging to the Galactic Empire. The Imperials were still engaged in combat with the local Nosaurian population of the planet, and after a decisive victory against them, were hoping to prevent any survivors escaping. Janks and the rest of the Uhumele's crew lay low in their ship, hoping to avoid Imperial attention while they were trapped.
While the crew waited out the grounding of their vessel, two members of the New Plymto resistance, who had survived the recent battle with the Imperials, snuck aboard their ship during the cover of darkness. One of the pair, a Jedi general named Dass Jennir, took the Uhumele's pilot Crys Taanzer by surprise as she stood in the ships entryway and subdued her. Janks and the rest of the crew were; however, located just inside the ship's entrance at the time, and the Phindian leveled his blaster at Jennir along with several other crew members, causing the Jedi to release Taanzer. After ordering the crew to hold fire as to not draw attention, Schurk-Heren introduced his the crew to Jennir and his companion, a Nosaurian Bomo Greenbark. Janks did not lower his weapon at first, but after learning the pair had survived the Empire's recent victory at Half-Axe Pass he approached them without the weapon aimed. Greenbark and Jennir then explained they were looking for the Nosaurian's family, who had fled the battle in the hopes of escaping the Imperials. Meekerdin-Maa informed the duo that all the Nosaurian refugees had been captured by Imperials and taken to be sold into slavery. The Following morning, Janks joined the rest of the crew and the two resistance members in a meeting to discuss how they might escape the Imperial's and New Plympto. When Jennir rejected an idea by Janks's fellow crewmate Ko Vakier to fight their way out, the Phinidian spoke up and questioned if he planned instead to simply sit and do nothing. Jennir then revealed his plan to make all the ships in the spaceport leave at once, giving the Imperials to many targets to take out. The plan was put into action, with Jennir stealing a Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing starfighter and using it to create the illusion that the Imperials were attacking the grounded ships in Cadgel Meadows. The Uhumele then took off amongst the other panicked vessels, and managed to escape New Plympto after fighting off several Imperial starfighters.
Once they were safely away, Janks and a Togorian crewmate named Mezgraf cooked a meal for the crew, which they ate while discussing their next destination, the slave world of Orvax IV, where Greenbark's family had been taken. Shortly before reaching the planet, Janks and the crew convened again to discuss what Jennir hoped to accomplish on Orvax IV. Greenbark and Jennir revealed they hoped to rescue the Nosaurian slaves on the planet, and Vakier, Mezgraf and Meekerdin-Maa offered to aid them in the venture. Upon reaching the planet, the rescue party disguised themselves and set off in search of the slaves, while Janks and the other crew members waited on the Uhumele. The group returned without Jennir, having discovered that Greenbark's wife Mesa had been killed, and his daughter Resa had been sold already. Jennir had split from the group to find the slaver who had sold Resa, and ordered that Greenbark be kept on the Uhumele while he did so. Janks and Meekerdin-Maa took on the task of preventing the Nosaurian from leaving, which he attempted to do constantly in the hopes of aiding Jennir. The pair eventually failed to restrain him and chased him as he ran through the ship, with only the timely intervention of Taanzer preventing his escape. Shortly afterwards, Jennir returned with the location and identity of Resa's buyer; a wealthy Human from the planet Esseles named Dezono Qua. After the Uhumele left Orvax IV, Janks approached Jennir to congratulate him, but the Jedi ignored him, and Mezgraf warned the Phindian that their crewmate probably want to be left alone.
Still intending on rescuing Resa, the Uhumele traveled to Esseles, where Jennir split from the group again to gather more information on Qua. While they waited for Jennir's return, the rest of the crew enjoyed the local cuisine, dining together in Calamar, Esseles capital. When Jennir did return he shared what he had learned with the crew and informed them that he and Greenbark would undertake the last leg of the mission alone, an idea which met with complete rejection. The entire crew of the Uhumele agreed to join the resistance members in an assault on the Qua family's villa, although some incorrectly assumed that Janks wouldn't help. Taanzer and her co-pilot Lynaliskar K'ra Snyffulnimatta then piloted the Uhumele to Qua's mountain top residence, where the rest of the crew disembarked and attacked the security droids Qua owned. Janks, Greenbark and Meekerdin-Maa then headed for a vent which gave them access to one of the buildings control panels. The Phindian covered the vent entrance, while his comrades crawled inside and successfully disabled the remaining security droids in the villa. They then moved on to try and find Qua, first running into his servant droid E-10, who Greenbark destroyed after the droid refused to reveal Qua's location. By the time the trio did find Qua, Jennir had already reached him and had him at gunpoint. Once Schurk-Heren, Vakier and Mezgraf arrived the crew interrogated Qua and discovered he had eaten Resa, at which point Jennir shot him.
Outraged that he had not been able to kill Qua himself, Greenbark revealed that Jennir was a Jedi to the rest of the group, a fact that the general had kept secret. Due to the bounty placed by the Empire on all Jedi's heads, the crew decided not to travel any further with Jennir as they did not wish to attract more attention to themselves. Leaving Jennir on Esseles, the Uhumele set course for the Core Worlds. A month after they had initially met Jennir and Greenbark, the Uhumele's crew stopped on the planet Pizkoss for supplies, and Janks made sure to gather food to cook for his crewmates. After collecting the goods, Janks begun making his way back to the Uhumele, but was interrupted on the way when Greenbark and Meekerdin-Maa collided with him in the street. The pair had been fleeing from Imperial troops, who swiftly caught up with them and opened fire. Janks crewmates took off, escaping the Imperial Stormtroopers, but caught unprepared, Janks was captured before he could run. The Imperials roughed the Phindian up, tearing his shirt and bruising his head, before taking him into custody.
Janks was imprisoned in a cell on board a Venator-class Star Destroyer, where he was questioned cruelly for several days about his crewmates. He was then left alone for several weeks, during which time he was served food daily by a faceless droid. Approximately three months after the Declaration of the New Order, Janks was visited by the Sith Lord Darth Vader and a scientist named Fane Peturri, who questioned him again about the Uhumele. The pair, who were planning an ambush for Janks's old crewmates, then left the Phindian alone again. At some point in the following month, Janks was moved to the space station in the Core Worlds known as Imperial Prison ISO-L8. There he remained imprisoned, till the assassin Falco Sang, who had been hired by Qua's family to kill the Uhumele's crew, broke into the Phindian's cell. Janks was questioned one final time about the crew who had abandoned him, before Sang killed him. Shortly after his death, Vader, who was also visiting the prison to question Janks about Jennir, found the prisoner's body, but failed to stop Sang escaping. The assassin would later gloat about killing Janks when he tracked down Jennir, although he failed to kill any further members of the Uhumele's crew.
Janks's name is written simply as "Jank" in some of his appearances.
- "Jawa's Corner" — Star Wars Insider 95
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia