Spiker functioned as a Chiss male mercenary and held membership in Big Gizz's swoop gang, providing services to Jabba the Hutt located on Tatooine. During the time of the Galactic Empire, he was a rare Chiss individual to venture out of the Unknown Regions; his heritage was a mystery to all, including Spiker himself. In the years leading up to the Battle of Yavin, he took on the role of an undercover operative within Jabba the Hutt's swoop gang, spying on its leader, Big Gizz, on behalf of Jabba, while intentionally giving the impression that he was not intelligent. In recognition of his efforts, Jabba gifted Spiker a unique suit of spiked armor, which became the basis for his well-known moniker.
For several years, Spiker collaborated with Gizz, maintaining his deceptive facade without detection. Alongside the other gang members, he participated in intimidating Jabba's clientele into settling their debts and gained notoriety for his ability to survive incredibly perilous maneuvers. In 3 ABY, the gang welcomed a new member, Jix, who was secretly an agent working for Lord Darth Vader. Jix launched an assault on Gizz and subsequently deceived Spiker by falsely claiming that Gizz had perished in a collision. Several days later, Jix abandoned Spiker to die after his swoop bike exploded during a pursuit of Boba Fett. Spiker survived the ordeal and received healing from members of the B'omarr Order. Furthermore, he reunited with Gizz, and together, they devised a scheme to seize control of a secret ship belonging to Jabba, located in Glass Mountain. Their plan went awry when Gorga the Hutt also sought to claim the ship, ultimately resulting in their departure from the adventure with nothing more than a stray Lizling named Onoh. During their travels, the trio faced an attack from a rogue Imperial dark trooper, managing to survive by a narrow margin. Following this incident, Spiker and Gizz were presumed to have vanished.
The individual who would later be known as "Spiker" was a male Chiss whose origins lay in the Unknown Regions, although he was unaware of his background. Somehow, he ended up in the Outer Rim Territories sometime after the Galactic Empire gained power. He was among the very small number of Chiss who had ventured beyond the boundaries of Chiss Space in over a century.
Eventually, he secured employment with Jabba Desilijic Tiure, a powerful Hutt crime lord residing on the planet of Tatooine. Jabba compensated a swoop gang, led by "Big Gizz," for carrying out various tasks on his behalf. However, he harbored some distrust towards Gizz and sought to place another, more loyal biker within the gang to ensure Gizz adhered to his directives. Jabba's Chiss recruit possessed a craving for acts of bravery that defied death, making a position in Gizz's swoop gang an ideal fit. Jabba commissioned the creation of a suit of spiked red armor for him, complete with a helmet to conceal his identity, providing protection while he rode his swoop bike and thwarting any attempts by Gizz to eliminate the Chiss if he discovered he was a spy working for Jabba. The suit, with its distinctive spikes, led to the nickname "Spiker," which the Chiss would be known by for the remainder of his life.
Spiker became part of Gizz's group of bikers, acting as a source of fear and a debt collector for Jabba. He demonstrated a strong understanding of tactics and strategy, eventually rising to the position of Gizz's lieutenant. To those who met Spiker, he appeared to be simple-minded and somewhat deranged. He would laugh hysterically at Gizz's jokes, frequently provoke altercations with spacers in Mos Eisley—Tatooine's main city—who were considerably larger than himself, and had a fondness for high-risk maneuvers that often left him with serious injuries. However, this was all part of a carefully constructed act devised by Jabba and Spiker to ensure that no one suspected his true intentions. While his outward persona seemed to idolize Gizz, he secretly harbored animosity towards the other biker. Spiker regularly reported back to Jabba on the swoopers' activities, informing him of any attempts by Gizz to divert extra funds. Spiker was seen as a bully by many of his subordinate bikers, including Vol Hamame. Hamame eventually left the gang due to disagreements with other members and sought employment with a criminal named Phedroi. Several years before the Battle of Yavin, Spiker was on an errand on Coruscant.
Sometime later, Spiker, Gizz, and several other bikers journeyed to Mos Eisley to collect a sum of money owed to Jabba by a Twi'lek smuggler named Whizzer. They located and cornered Whizzer, but he did not have the money. He assured them that he would settle his debt within a week or so. Gizz was not satisfied and ordered Spiker to kill Whizzer with his bare hands. Spiker, aware that a crate next to the Twi'lek likely contained spice, suggested that Gizz grant Whizzer an extension on his debt in exchange for some of the drug, hoping to provoke Gizz into defying Jabba's orders. Whizzer agreed and provided the swoopers with some of the spice, though they returned to collect his money several days later.
Later, around 0 ABY, Spiker, Gizz, and another biker named Twitch searched the old home of the late Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi for anything valuable. The swoop gang was scheduled to return to Jabba's Palace but decided to make a stop at Chalmun's Cantina in Mos Eisley first. On their way, they were ambushed by a group of droids led by 12-4C-41, who sought to discover the location of Jabba's fortress. Spiker and the others managed to escape, and fearing that the droids intended to kill their Hutt employer, they fled towards Jabba's Palace to warn him. 12-4C-41 captured one of Spiker's fellow riders, but the swoop gang succeeded in sending a message to Jabba's Palace about the approaching barge the droids were using to travel to the desert citadel. Jabba was pleased with his bikers for their warning, although they failed to inform him that they had discovered that the droids were not after Jabba himself but his torture-droid, EV-9D9.
In 3 ABY, while terrorizing the citizens of Mos Eisley, Spiker was attacked by a Human on a swoop bike. He was knocked to the ground, and both he and Gizz angrily declared the Human's death. Before Gizz could pull the trigger of his blaster, Spiker's attacker identified himself as Jix. His defiant attitude impressed Gizz, who decided to bring him to Jabba and induct him into the swoop gang. Spiker reluctantly agreed, still harboring anger towards Jix for his attack. They arrived at Jabba's Palace and informed the Hutt about Jix's joining the group, but Jabba paid little attention. News had arrived of a death mark placed by Black Sun on a prominent Rebel named Luke Skywalker. Skywalker had been spotted near Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut on Tatooine, and Jabba dispatched his swoop gang to the area to attempt to kill him. Confident in their chances against the Jedi Knight-in-training, they set off towards Skywalker's location.
They advanced towards Kenobi's hut, planning to sneak up on Skywalker and surround him. Their plans were thwarted by Jix, who began firing prematurely, alerting Skywalker and allowing him to seek shelter. Using his lightsaber, Skywalker fought off several of the bikers, commandeering a swoop bike and using it to flee towards Beggar's Canyon. Spiker and his comrades quickly pursued him, but Gizz and Jix were both incapacitated when their swoops collided accidentally. Skywalker's skillful maneuvering proved too much for many of Spiker's fellows, who crashed into rocks protruding from the cliff face, but Spiker managed to avoid any obstacles. Numerous attempts by Skywalker to dislodge Spiker from his bike failed. However, with most of his comrades downed and the arrival of Skywalker's ally, Dash Rendar, on another swoop bike, Spiker decided to abandon the pursuit and called a retreat. Jix had survived his crash and teamed up with Spiker before they visited Jabba to explain their failure. According to Jix, Gizz had been killed when his head was crushed by his swoop bike.
They told Jabba that Skywalker had simply been lucky and that they would succeed the next time they pursued him. However, the Hutt was suspicious of Jix. In response to one of Jabba's questions, the Human implied that he considered Spiker a coward for calling the retreat. Enraged, Spiker prepared to attack the new recruit, but Jabba intervened before things could escalate. Spiker was fortunate to escape Jabba's Palace with his life, but the Hutt soon recalled all of his bikers to his court. One of his trusted lieutenants had been found dead, and a secure communications relay had been broken into and used. Jabba trusted all of his other employees in the Palace, making one of the swoop gang the likely culprit.
Jabba's interrogation was interrupted when his majordomo, Bib Fortuna, arrived with the news that Boba Fett—a renowned bounty hunter who was delivering the carbonite-encased body of Han Solo to Jabba—had landed his ship near the palace. Jabba did not wish to pay Fett his asking price and tasked Spiker and Jix with intercepting the Mandalorian bounty hunter on his way to the palace and retrieving Solo's body, offering them five thousand credits for their efforts. A multitude of other bounty hunters were on Tatooine attempting to steal Solo from Fett, but Spiker managed to push them aside as he approached Fett's speeder bike. However, one of the bounty hunters, Bossk, fired at him and Jix, shooting the Chiss in the stomach and destroying his swoop, leaving Spiker unconscious and severely wounded. Jix survived and placed Jabba's code book—which had been used to access his communications relay—on Spiker's body to evade suspicion.
Despite his life-threatening injuries, Spiker made his way to the Citadel of B'omarr, where the B'omarr monks nursed him back to health. By the time Spiker was permitted to leave, Jabba had been killed at the Battle of the Great Pit of Carkoon, leaving him without a means to earn credits. To Spiker's great surprise, Gizz arrived in his room the day he was planning to leave. Gizz told his companion that Jix had attempted to kill him and that the Human was a spy for Darth Vader. The B'omarr had found Gizz and replaced part of his broken skull with a metal plate, which intermittently picked up comlink and other signals from nearby. The two left the B'omarr Citadel, but Spiker was uncertain about their next steps, with no money and no one to employ them. Gizz had learned of an old storehouse belonging to Jabba in the nearby Glass Mountain, where Jabba supposedly kept a well-armed ship for escape purposes. They devised a plan to steal the ship and become pirates in the local star systems.
Upon reaching Glass Mountain, they discovered that they had been beaten to the punch by a group of thugs employed by Gorga Desilijic Aarrpo, Jabba's nephew. However, the bikers quickly dealt with the thugs and rescued a Lizling named Onoh, who had been stationed by Jabba to safeguard Glass Mountain several years prior. Gorga's men had already opened the hangar and prepared the secret ship, Spirit of Jabba, for takeoff, leaving little additional work for the swoop bikers. Onoh initially protested their boarding the ship, but his resistance diminished when they informed him that Jabba had been killed. Spiker and Gizz found the ship to be very well-stocked and equipped with numerous weapons that they hoped would help them carve out a piece of the Outer Rim for themselves. They also decided to take Onoh on as a member of their pirate crew.
One of Gorga's henchmen had survived and alerted the Hutt to the events, but Spiker managed to fly the ship into space and establish a significant lead over Gorga's pursuing enforcers. However, an interactive security tape—the "Jabba Tape"—activated, immobilizing the ship until the security clearance code was entered. The tape also began depleting oxygen from the ship's bridge and sealed off all exits, estimating that they had approximately four minutes left to live. While this was happening, one of Gorga's ships caught up with the would-be pirates. Gizz was able to pick up transmissions on his skull plate, instructing them to surrender. The ship fired several shots at Spirit of Jabba, causing significant damage but also tearing apart a bulkhead, allowing Spiker, Gizz, and Onoh to escape the oxygen-deprived bridge.
With the artificial gravity disabled, Spiker and Gizz could do little but float aimlessly around the bridge and were unable to respond to Gorga's ship's transmissions and warnings because the Jabba Tape was blocking communications. Eventually, Onoh revealed that he knew the override code, and the bikers were able to deactivate the tape and announce their surrender to Gorga's ship. The other vessel escorted them down towards Mos Eisley, but when Gizz's skull plate picked up a transmission from Gorga announcing that Spiker and his companions would be killed upon reaching the surface, they decided to be less cooperative. Gizz felt they would have a decent chance of evading the other ship if they could lighten their load, so Spiker and Onoh ventured into the cargo hold and began preparing much of the ship's provisions to be released onto Gorga below. They attempted to flee in Spirit of Jabba, but Gorga's ship was able to disable them, and they crash-landed in the desert, kilometers from the nearest settlement.
The group exited the ship and, with few other options, began their long trek back to civilization. They eventually found a place to acquire replacement swoops, but the old days were gone. They never reconnected with the rest of the gang, and Onoh was their only follower. Some time after Gorga's pursuit of them, the trio were sleeping near the Mos Espa Grand Arena when a loud noise woke both Spiker and Onoh. A group of Jawa sandcrawlers, seemingly out of control, arrived and nearly ran over the bikers and their Lizling companion. Spiker quickly mounted his bike and managed to save Gizz from being crushed by the largest sandcrawler, but Gizz's bike was destroyed.
The bikers watched in astonishment as the three sandcrawlers continued to the edge of the Mos Espa Grand Arena and fell in, dropping over fifty meters. Determined to exact his revenge, Gizz led the others down to the largest sandcrawler, which was lying on its side. They noticed that the vehicle was covered in blaster burns, which they suspected were of Imperial origin. Gizz found only one Jawa survivor, a male named Klepti B'ay, who repeatedly urged them to flee while they still could. Translating from Klepti's Jawaese, Onoh told Spiker and Gizz that his tribe had been attacked by a "droid of kind unseen." Surveying the area, Gizz found a deactivated IG-97 battle droid and, believing it to be the droid Klepti spoke of, shot at it, believing he had destroyed the IG-series droid. However, the droid the Jawas were referring to was actually an Imperial dark trooper that had fought against Rebel forces. It had survived on board a Rebel ship that crash-landed on Tatooine almost 3 years earlier. The dark trooper emerged from the sandcrawler and launched itself at Spiker and Gizz.
Gizz, Onoh, and Klepti fled while Spiker started up his bike. Their plan worked perfectly, with the dark trooper following the three beings on foot, while Spiker was able to get behind it and fire several blaster shots at the droid. However, the droid shrugged off the blaster shots and began its pursuit of Spiker, who had little choice but to try to flee. Unable to evade the dark trooper, Spiker hatched a plan to entangle it in fiber wire connected to part of the Grand Arena. Although he was able to tie up and momentarily disable the droid, it broke free and continued its chase. Gizz and the newly reactivated IG-97 droid began firing at the dark trooper, but their efforts were in vain. Eventually, though, the dark trooper dropped its blaster, giving Spiker an opportunity to grab it. The Chiss biker reached the heavy blaster before his opponent, but the dark trooper seized his swoop bike and sent Spiker sprawling.
The bike landed on the dark trooper, but it once again shrugged off the damage and continued its efforts to kill the bikers. Klepti and Onoh released a barrage of boulders from atop one of the arena's stands, crushing the dark trooper, and in the explosion that followed, it was finally destroyed. The group—which Klepti, swearing a life debt to Spiker and Gizz, had joined—left, taking the ruined IG-97 droid with them so they could use its blaster. Spiker's whereabouts after these events were unknown, and he was believed to have disappeared soon after them. A document written by Tem Eliss for the University of Sanbra reported that Spiker was a Chiss and also speculated that he may have had a learning disability.
Spiker possessed cunning and a strong understanding of tactics and strategy that surpassed most of his peers. Despite his intelligence, most believed Spiker was quite dim—either due to repeated collisions or some sort of learning disability—which was exactly how he wanted to be perceived. He purposefully laughed at all of Gizz's jokes and acted unintelligent to conceal his true motivations. He was also quick to anger. When Jix implied that he was a coward, he challenged the Human to a fight, but Jabba intervened.
Spiker was exceptionally brave, risking his life on numerous occasions throughout his career. The Chiss had a penchant for performing extremely dangerous maneuvers with his swoop, which most other bikers would not have even considered. He had a particular fondness for bashing his swoop bike against walls. He looked down on Gizz and the other criminals he associated with, believing they were all talk and no action. Despite initially despising Gizz, Spiker grew to like and respect him after Jabba's demise. During the dark trooper incident, rather than fleeing in his swoop, he saved Gizz, Klepti, and Onoh's lives. Spiker rarely removed his trademark spiked armor, and only Gizz and a select few others had ever seen his face.
Spiker was created as part of the Shadows of the Empire multimedia campaign. He was first mentioned in Steve Perry's Shadows of the Empire novel and played a more significant role in John Wagner and Kilian Plunkett's comic adaptation. His backstory was further developed in the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook, by Peter M. Schweighofer, and he also appeared in two tie-in comics, The Jabba Tape and "Sand Blasted," written by Wagner and Plunkett, respectively. He can also be briefly seen on Coruscant in a background panel of "First Impressions," which was also illustrated by Plunkett.
An article written by Juan Schwartz appearing in Star Wars Gamer 5, University of Sanbra Guide to Intelligent Life: The Chiss, established that Spiker was a Chiss. Although his appearance in The Jabba Tape and Sand Blasted hinted at this, this is the only official confirmation. Initially, in Shadows of the Empire, part of Spiker's skin is visible through his eye holes, and it is Human in color. Spiker is also a playable character in Star Wars Missions 10: Showdown in Mos Eisley. In Missions, as well as in the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook, his mask is illustrated differently from his comic appearances.
At Celebration VI, author Ryder Windham suggested to Leland Chee, keeper of the Holocron continuity database, that Spiker could be an adult Kung'urama'nuruodo, the Chiss Jedi who was the main character of Windham's Star Wars: The Clone Wars Secret Missions series. Chee personally supported the retcon.