Merei Spanjaf

Merei Spanjaf was a human female and the girlfriend of Zare Leonis. She was tech-savvy, and she used her abilities to help Leonis uncover the truth about his missing sister. Hailing from the planet Corulag, Spanjaf spoke with a Core Worlds accent and played kicker for the AppSci SaberCats grav-ball team when she moved to Lothal. She was close to her parents, Gandr and Jessa Spanjaf, who affectionately called her "Mer Bear."

Moving to Lothal
A native of the Core Worlds planet of Corulag, Merei Spanjaf and her parents migrated to the backwater Outer Rim world of Lothal. Her parents were data-security specialists and sought to take advantage of the new Imperial developmental program on Lothal. She enrolled at the Junior Academy of Applied Sciences where she joined the school's grav-ball team, the AppSci SaberCats, and befriended two Human boys Zare Leonis and Beck Ollet; the former another recent migrant and the latter a third-generation Lothalian resident. Both boys were fellow SaberCat players with Zare being the center-striker of the team. The SaberCats were coached by an elderly Duros coached named Ramset.

While discussing strategies prior to an upcoming game against the rival Carvers team, Merei and Zare talked about their homeworlds and the different grav-ball rules on Lothal. While Spanjaf was familiar with the Corellian rules, she and Zare were unfamiliar with the Lothalian variant of the game. After further discussions, Zare agreed to assign Merei to be the SaberCats' kicker. During a match against the Carvers, Spanjaf's kick along with the fullback player Ollet's "big carry" helped the SaberCats score a victory by a narrow two points. As a result, Merei came to develop a warm and close friendship with Zare and Beck.

Three is Company
After learning of Merei's computer hacking skills, Zare and Beck asked Spanjaf to locate the latter's old family homestead and orchard in the Westhills. To Beck's dismay, Merei discovered that his family's former orchard had been reclassified for mining extraction. Beck Ollet had recently moved to Capital City after the Empire bought his family's lands. While the Imperials had compensated his family, Beck was upset that the Empire was disrupting Lothal's traditional way of life particularly the jogan fruit harvesting tradition.

The day after a successful match against the Green Dragons, Beck took Merei and Zare on a trip to see the "real Lothal." This proved to be Merei and Zare's first trip to the Lothalian countryside. While traveling to Beck's former orchard in the Westhills on jump-speeders, Merei and Zare learnt more about Beck's grievances against the Empire which were mainly linked to his unhappiness with the rapid industrialization that was transforming Lothal's countryside. Upon arriving at Beck's old orchard, they discovered that the Empire was using harvester droids to harvest the jogan fruits. These droids proved incompetent and ended up bruising the fruits. These only hardened Beck's feeling against the Empire, which would later have implications for Merei and Zare.

Following a match against the Thrashers, Beck took Merei and Zare took them on a night trip to his family orchards. Merei and Zare reluctantly agreed to follow him. Upon arriving, they discovered a group of unknown insurgents planting detonator on several Imperial seismic surveyors, which had been sent to look for minerals beneath Beck's orchard. The insurgents disappeared as soon as Merei and her companions arrived. Zare quickly contacted the Imperial authorities who sent men to defuse the explosives and to apprehend the insurgents. Merei and Zare quickly deduced that Beck was somehow sympathetic or linked to the insurgents when he misled the authorities by telling them that the insurgents had gone north; when in fact they had actually gone south. Despite their concerns, Merei and Zare agreed to conceal Beck's actions because they were teammates.

The three friends did not discuss the orchard incident throughout the winter season. Whenever Zare or Merei questioned him, he would claim that he had to study for the final examinations. Later that year, the Junior AppSci's bigoted athletic director Janus Fhurek unilaterally transferred the SaberCats' two alien players, the Aqualish Hench Sina and the Rodian Frid Kelio, to another school after Zare refused to exclude them from the team. When Zare expressed anger at the situation, Merei exerted a calming influence and advised her friend to pick the right battles. She reminded him that he was headed to a career as an agricultural scientist or Imperial military officer and that he should not let sports team politics bother him too much. Zare reluctantly agreed after recalling that he still had a team to lead.

Later, Merei and Zare found an opportunity to get back at Fhurek. Using her hacking skills, Spanjaf discovered that the athletic director had made a bet that the SaberCats would win by eight points during the final grav-ball tournament match at the end of the winter season without alien help. Using this information, Zare carefully guided his team to victory over the Kothal Roughnecks by a margin of six points; causing Fhurek to lose his bet. For her part, Merei followed Zare's instructions during the game. After Fhurek retaliated by making life difficult for Zare, Merei encouraged her boyfriend to focus on his studies since Fhurek was connected to senior staff at the Academy for Young Imperials.

Spring of Rebellion
During the spring season, Merei, at the request of Zare, hacked into the Imperial Academy's records and discovered that her boyfriend's enrollment application was under review. Fhurek had sent a file questioning Zare's fitness for Imperial service. When Zare panicked, Merei told him to calm down and explained that she could not do anything since any attempts to manipulate the database would expose her hacking. Merei advised her friend again to keep his head down and to focus on getting good marks so he could enroll at the Academy. Zare complied and focused on his studies for the next two months. During this period, the couple spent more time together and explored Capital City's environs.

After two months had elapsed, Merei discovered that Zare's Academy application status had progressed to "Accepted" despite Fhurek's objections. However, this good news was overshadowed by two developments in Zare's life. Firstly, Zare and Beck had witnessed Imperial stormtroopers under Lieutenant Piers Roddance opening fire on a group of farmers protesting their eviction. To add insult to injury, the Imperial authorities had claimed that the farmers had instigated the shooting by attacking Imperial surveyors and destroying mining equipment. Secondly, Zare and his family had been devastated by the mysterious disappearance of his sister Dhara Leonis, a star cadet at the Imperial Academy. While the authorities claimed that she had run away, Zare disputed that account.

In response to these developments, Zare declined his acceptance offer to the Imperial Academy. He also enlisted Merei's services into helping find his sister Dhara. While fearful of the consequences, Merei agreed to help her boyfriend. Following their graduation from Junior AppSci, Merei still kept in touch with Zare. Despite Merei's best efforts to probe Imperial databases, she found no trace of Dhara. They were also unable to communicate with Beck, who was purportedly traveling with his cousins throughout Lothal before starting work as a harvest supervisor in the next fall. In reality, Beck had joined a cell of insurgents who were waging a campaign of sabotage against the Empire.

After some difficulty, Merei managed to establish contact with Beck who arranged to rendezvous with his friends. Fearing that Beck was in danger, Zare advised Merei to stay behind while he went to meet Beck. Zare's suspicions were confirmed when he discovered that Beck was part of an insurgent cell which had been destroying Imperial mining droids. Beck narrowly escape captured by an Imperial patrol at his former family orchards in the Westhills, which had been turned into a mine. Following his encounter with Zare, Merei commed him to warn him of a security alert in the orchard lands.

Behind the scenes
Following the appearance of Spanjaf on the cover of Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice, author Jason Fry received a tweet from a fan who thanked him for the character, as she had been told as a child that girls couldn't code. Merei Spanjaf's character was originally imagined as a foil for Zare Leonis and was to be a slicer and stat geek who would help the SaberCats, but not actually play on the team. She was added as a member of the team at the suggestion of Greg Weisman, a producer of Star Wars Rebels. The character's last name is a combination of the last name of two of Jason Fry's friends, Emma Span and Jay Jaffe.

Appearances

 * Servants of the Empire: Edge of the Galaxy
 * Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks
 * Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice
 * Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy