Isolder was born into the royal family of Hapes as the younger son of Ta’a Chume and her consort, although he later had several younger half-brothers from Ta’a Chume’s quest to provide a female heir to the throne. Growing up, he had the company of his older brother Kalen, who was the Chume’da of the Hapes Consortium. Kalen and Isolder were close, and Isolder did not envy his brother’s status as the heir, mainly because he knew that as the second child he had more options available to him.

When Isolder was nineteen, Kalen was kidnapped and murdered by a pirate near the Terephon system, which left Isolder devastated. In order to track down his brother’s murderer, Isolder went undercover as a privateer to get information on who committed the crime. After two years of going so deep undercover that his own mother’s spies could not even locate him, Isolder located the perpetrator, a pirate named Harravan, and had him arrested. Unfortunately, Harravan was killed in his jail cell before he could be interrogated further.

Impressed by Isolder’s resolve to bring his brother’s murderer to justice, Ta’a Chume named him the new Chume’da. However, Isolder suffered further tragedy when his fiancée, Lady Elliar, apparently committed suicide by drowning herself in one of Hapes’ reflecting pools. It would later come out that Ta’a Chume had arranged the murders of both Kalen and Lady Elliar on political grounds, as she found them both too weak to rule.

Isolder was considered bold and brave, but he was also easily manipulated, especially by his mother

Isolder had at his disposal both his personal Miy’til starfighter Storm and the Hapan Battle Dragon Song of War. The construction of Storm was overseen by Isolder personally, and the hull was modified to contain three laser cannons, two ion cannons, a concussion missile launcher, and four thermal detonator bombing tubes. Song of War was the oversized Battle Dragon that served as the flagship of the Hapan Navy. Painted bright red to set it apart from the other Battle Dragons,

Due to his position in Hapan society, Isolder also made use of personal shielding to protect himself against assassination attempts.