D'Spal was a female Romulan officer who commanded the Vault, a cloaked research installation that was established to house a clandestine initiative to reverse engineer the hardware of Borg technology. Though her outpost had been intended for scientific purposes, the High Council also planned for D'Spal and her space station to serve as a rendezvous point for the Imperial Starfleet to regroup after the impending destruction of their homeworld, which the commander survived. Though D'Spal anticipated the reformation of the Romulan armada, the first visitor that the Vault received was the miner Nero, who she proceeded to assist with his scheme to eliminate those that both individuals saw as responsible for the loss of their people. (TNG comic: "Countdown, Number Three")