Gandr Spanjaf, a human male, was a member of the Garel City cell. He was the father of Merei Spanjaf and the husband of Jessa Spanjaf. Alongside his wife, he specialized in data security, providing services to various ministries within the Galactic Empire. Some years prior to the Battle of Yavin, Gandr and his family relocated to the planet Lothal with the intention of enhancing the data network security for the local Imperial authorities. Unbeknownst to Gandr and Jessa, their daughter Merei was engaging in illicit activities. These included hacking into the Transportation Ministry's network, functioning as a courier for the criminal Gray Syndicate, and associating with known rebels and their sympathizers, such as the Spectres cell, her former classmates Zare Leonis and Beck Ollet, and the fugitive Holshef. Merei's actions were driven by her desire to assist her boyfriend, Zare, in locating his sister, Dhara Leonis, who had been abducted for a clandestine Imperial initiative known as Project Harvester.
Following Merei's unauthorized access to the Transportation Ministry's data network, Jessa, his spouse, was part of the team tasked with investigating the security breach. During that year, Merei dedicated much of her time to staying one step ahead of the Imperial investigators, including altering her school photo, while simultaneously working as a courier for the Gray Syndicate. Concerned about his daughter's declining academic performance and overall well-being, Gandr equipped her with a high-powered locator for emergencies. This device proved invaluable when Merei orchestrated her own abduction, which resulted in a devastating Imperial raid on Ake's Tavern, the Gray Syndicate's headquarters. Consequently, Gandr and Jessa came to the conclusion that the Gray Syndicate was responsible for the Transportation Ministry's data breach and had kidnapped Merei to impede the Imperial investigation.
Later, Gandr and Jessa were compelled to flee Lothal with their daughter Merei after the Empire initiated a crackdown on all forms of sedition and criminal activity following the Spectres' takeover of the Imperial Communications Center at Jalath. While Jessa was incensed at Merei for "ruining" their lives, Gandr expressed pride in his daughter's accomplishments. After escaping to the planet Garel with assistance from Old Jho and the Spectres, Gandr utilized his expertise in data security to create new identities for his own family and the Leonises.
Originating from the Core Worlds planet of Corulag, Gandr Spanjaf was married to Jessa Spanjaf and was the father of Merei Spanjaf. He and Jessa specialized in data security, working as contractors for various Imperial ministries. Their skills were used to identify potential saboteurs and thieves, who were then apprehended by Imperial stormtroopers. Several years before the Battle of Yavin, Gandr and his family relocated to the Outer Rim world of Lothal to capitalize on emerging Imperial development opportunities. The local Imperial ministries required data-security specialists to protect their data networks, which were constantly targeted by rogue programs and data breaches. Gandr and his family established their residence in an apartment within Lothal's Capital City.
During her first year on Lothal, Gandr's daughter, Merei, attended the Junior Academy of Applied Sciences in Capital City. She participated in the school's grav-ball team and developed friendships with Zare Leonis and [Beck Ollet](/article/beck_ollet], two rebel sympathizers who were critical of the Empire's policies towards Lothal. Following the disappearance of Zare's sister, Dhara, a cadet at the Academy for Young Imperials, Merei offered her assistance in locating her. The following year, Merei enrolled in the Vocational School for Institutional Security to pursue a career in information security, following in her parents' footsteps. Unbeknownst to Gandr and Jessa, Merei intended to utilize her computer slicing skills to locate Dhara.
One evening, upon returning home from work, Gandr discovered his daughter browsing her datapad in the kitchen. Unaware to him, she was searching the Imperial customs database for information about Dhara. When questioned by Gandr, Merei claimed that she was accessing the database as part of her intrusions counter-measures class. Accepting her explanation, Gandr expressed relief that it would reflect poorly on their family business if she were caught snooping in an Imperial Security Bureau data vault. Merei then pretended that she was investigating a data breach into the Imperial customs database as part of her homework assignment, noting that the intruders had managed to upgrade their access despite having only low-level permissions.
When Merei feigned confusion, Gandr explained that the Imperial authorities had prioritized establishing systems when they first arrived on Lothal, neglecting to secure them adequately. As a result, the Imperial data network on Lothal was plagued by rogue programs and other data breaches. Gandr and his colleagues were forced to conduct security sweeps every weekend, which slowed down the data network. Furthermore, Gandr revealed that the most effective intrusions were carried out by individuals who had gained network access by physically entering government offices, ministries, and buildings. While assisting with his daughter's "homework assignment," Gandr inadvertently provided Merei with crucial information that aided her in planning her infiltration of the Imperial Transportation Ministry's headquarters on Lothal.
Using three snooper programs she had obtained from the Gray Syndicate, Merei successfully infiltrated the Transportation Ministry and gained access to the Imperial database on Lothal. To further her efforts, she had also created a fake ISB account. However, she was still unable to access Dhara's files due to a lack of security clearance. During a dinnertime conversation where Gandr and Jessa were discussing Lothal politics, Merei seized the opportunity to inquire about using a ZX-5 access disk, a high-powered Imperial military decoder. Gandr explained that these decoders were used by Imperial officials to decrypt classified government files. Using this information, Merei initiated a plan to obtain an Imperial ZX-5 disk with the help of Zare Leonis. During the conversation, Jessa revealed that she had been assigned to investigate a data breach at the Transportation Ministry, which had been caused by Merei.
With the assistance of Zare and an undercover rebel cadet named Dev Morgan, Merei managed to obtain a stolen ZX-5 decoder from Morgan's rebel associates. She used the decoder to decrypt a classified Imperial file, which revealed that Dhara had been forcibly inducted into a secret program known as Project Harvester, based on the planet Arkanis. Several days later, Gandr was present during a dinner conversation when his wife Jessa discussed recent developments in her investigation into the Transportation Ministry data breach. While two of the snooper programs had managed to delete themselves, the third had failed to do so due to a faulty chronometer. As a result, Jessa was able to freeze and preserve the code of a third snooper. While Gandr was impressed with his wife's computing skills, Merei was fearful that the Empire would eventually come after her.
Merei's illegal activities led to a decline in her school grades. Noticing this deviation from her typical behavior, Gandr inquired about the cause. Merei responded that she was finding her new school work challenging and that she was receiving assistance from her classmates at the anti-intrusion club. When Jessa questioned Merei about her interactions with boys, Merei acknowledged that she had a relationship with Zare but only communicated with him three times a week for fifteen minutes at a time. In response to Merei's defensiveness, Gandr assured her that her parents were there to help, prompting Merei to ask them to allow her to resolve the issues herself.
When Merei inquired about the progress of Jessa's investigation, Jessa was initially hesitant to share information until Gandr frowned at her. He and Jessa accepted Merei's explanation that she was interested in Jessa's investigation because she aspired to follow her parents' career path as data security specialists. Jessa revealed that her team of investigators was attempting to match the captured snooper to work done by known criminal offenders. While they had not yet been able to identify the intruder, Jessa revealed that an eyewitness had encountered an individual posing as a Phelarion School student selling raffle tickets. However, the description of the person did not match any known Phelarion student. Unbeknownst to both parents, Merei was the intruder who had impersonated the Phelarion student to gain access to the Transportation Ministry building.
One morning, Gandr encountered Merei as she was about to depart for a courier run for her crime boss, Laxo. Merei managed to dispel Gandr's suspicions by claiming that she was meeting with her classmates at the anti-intrusion club to review classwork. Before she left, Gandr gave his daughter a locator so that he and Jessa could find Merei if she encountered any trouble. He explained that this device was military-grade and could penetrate anything short of a few metric tons of lead or an Imperial data center's jamming field. Merei solemnly promised her father that she would use the locator if she ever needed it.
Later, Gandr was present during a breakfast conversation between Merei and Jessa. In an attempt to mislead Jessa's investigation team, Merei persuaded her classmate Jix Hekyl to switch her V-SIS photo with that of Hestia Tarleton, a student at the Young Ladies' Seminary of Lothal Settlers. This ploy succeeded in confusing the Transportation Ministry witnesses, who were unable to identify the real Merei. In response, Jessa's investigation team was forced to compare the Transportation Ministry data breach's intrusion pattern with data from accounts registered with several Lothalian repeater services. This was a lengthy process that would require obtaining a warrant from the courts.
Following the end of Lothal's winter break, Gandr was present during a dinner table conversation when Jessa revealed that she had managed to narrow down the Transportation Ministry's intrusion pattern to three repeater services, including Bakiska's. When Jessa expressed satisfaction that her investigation was nearing its conclusion, Gandr commented that it was going to be "game over" for the intruder. This development distressed Merei, who left the dining room under the pretext of having to tackle homework. Unbeknownst to both her parents, Merei then contacted Jix and made arrangements to enter Bakiska's data warehouse and delete Merei's account data with a pulse-mag under the pretext of doing Laxo's "business". However, their plan fell apart when the Bakiska's staff evicted them from the premises.
In desperation, Merei staged her own kidnapping and sent a fake ransom demand to her parents' channels. This message, purporting to come from the Gray Syndicate, demanded that Jessa cease her investigation into the Transportation Ministry data breach if she and her husband wanted their daughter returned unharmed. Gandr and Jessa received Merei's message and contacted the Imperial authorities, who dispatched stormtroopers to raid Ake's Tavern. Due to the locator that Gandr had gifted Merei, the authorities were able to pinpoint his daughter's exact location. During the raid, the Imperials killed all of the criminals and rescued Merei, whom they believed was a hostage. Unbeknownst to everyone, Merei seized the opportunity to use her pulse-mag to delete all of the Gray Syndicate's data in the hopes of frustrating the Imperial investigation.
Following Merei's "kidnapping", Gandr comforted his daughter after she woke up screaming. He mistook her grief for post-trauma and embraced her in an effort to console her. Gandr was unaware that Merei was experiencing guilt for her role in causing the deaths of Laxo and his associates, who were not responsible for the Transportation Ministry data breach. Later that morning, Gandr praised his daughter for helping his wife Jessa to close her investigation into the Transportation Ministry breach. He explained that Merei's kidnapping had saved Jessa from having to lock down and search three repeater services. Shortly later, Merei received a call on her datapad from her boyfriend Zare, who informed her that he had received a mid-year transfer to the Imperial Academy on Arkanis.
Following the destruction of the Gray Syndicate, Gandr's daughter Merei became involved in another scheme to help the fugitive poet Holshef leave Lothal. Holshef, a poet and artist who had drawn the ire of the Empire, had befriended Merei. During a dinnertime conversation, Gandr and Jessa were discussing work-related issues when Merei inquired about the Empire's recent efforts to tighten offworld travel on Lothal. Gandr then jokingly asked his daughter whether she was planning a family vacation. Merei responded that she and her classmates at V-SIS had been discussing the Empire's new security measures. His wife Jessa then added that the Empire was tightening security by prohibiting wildcat launches into space and introducing stringent ID checks at Lothalian spaceports. This information led Merei to realize that she could not get her friend Holshef offworld through a spaceport.
The following week, the Lothal rebel cell known as the Spectres seized control of the Imperial Communications Center at Jalath and made a broadcast. In response, the Empire destroyed the tower, disrupting all offworld communications on Lothal. As a result, data had to be couriered by R4 courier droids and uploaded to transmitters on orbiting communications ships. When Gandr suggested that the Empire would not have cut them off unless Lothal was in real danger, Jessa responded that the Empire had overreacted and created hardship for both government agencies and data-security experts on Lothal.
After Merei's classmate Jix Hekyl was arrested by the Imperial authorities, Merei realized that it was only a matter of time before the Empire arrested her for her involvement in the Transportation Ministry data breach. She contacted her mother Jessa and instructed her parents to meet her at the bar in Old Jho's Pit Stop, which lay beyond the Easthills. The Ithorian tavern keeper Old Jho had connections to the Spectres and had made arrangements to smuggle Merei, her family, and Holshef offworld. Upon arriving there, Gandr and Jessa learned about the full extent of Merei's involvement in the Transportation Ministry data breach and her attempts to evade Imperial injustice. While his wife Jessa reacted with anger towards Merei for "ruining" their lives, Gandr was impressed with his daughter's efforts to hack into the Imperial database.
After viewing several highly classified documents which exposed several Imperial atrocities on Lothal, Gandr and Jessa realized that their suspicions about the Empire were correct and agreed to escape with their daughter offworld. Gandr also transferred his family's credits to places where the Empire would have difficulty freezing them. Gandr and his family spent the night at Old Jho's Pit Stop while awaiting departure on Old Jho's freighter for the Garel system. Old Jho had already arranged to meet the Spectres in the Garel system, who would then take them into hiding on the planet Garel. Gandr initially disapproved of Merei and Jessa's plan to return to Capital City and rescue Leonis' parents but relented after Old Jho agreed to pick up his family in his freighter.
Gandr and his family later traveled with the Leonises and their nanny droid Auntie Nags to Garel, where they planned to go into hiding. Later, they were joined by Zare and his sister Dhara, who had been rescued by Merei, Jessa, and the Spectres. Once in hiding, Gandr created new identities for both his family and the Leonises.
Gandr was a human male with dark, shaggy hair that was starting to turn gray. He was a proficient data-security specialist capable of understanding the architecture of a data network from a considerable distance. However, he had a tendency to overlook things that were right in front of him. Unlike his wife Jessa, Gandr was not inquisitive and did not have a habit of questioning his daughter Merei's activities. As a data-security specialist, Gandr was in a position to provide his daughter with a powerful military-grade locator, which proved crucial in enabling the Imperial authorities to "rescue" her following a staged kidnapping. Gandr was also known to regularly consume fizzy Moogan teas, drinking them several times a day.