So Isseya fucked off after the Landsmeet when Loghain was spared, and the first thing she did was to go home and try to prepare her people for the Blight. She was in the Alienage when the darkspawn hit and she kept them fighting up until the Archdemon's death.
When it was all over, she decided to leave Ferelden and headed north to try and free the elves sold to Tevinter, which led to her being a slave killer and an associate of Fenris and then the Shadow Dragons. She's invaluable to the group because she learned templar techniques from Alistair, so she can nullify magic and that makes her and her big fuck off sword a real nasty surprise for the slavers.
The Shadow Dragons try to keep discussion of politics away from her because if she thinks they'll pass up on even one group of slaves for convenience or something, she will get nasty and someone will die. Lorelai gets asked if she's always been like this. Lorelai just tells them about how she tried to fight a group of templars when she was seven, just to keep them from taking her friend away.
