Noel comes from a very (very) wealthy family who run an inherited mortuary business empire. The loneliness of a big house, homeschooling and distant parents lead to her being shy and withdrawn as a child. In contrast, her identical twin brother Leon was outgoing and sociable. But their parents wanted heirs, not children. It was always clear that Leon was much better suited to inheriting the business, which was a great relief to Noel, who was content to have the pressure of perfection taken off her shoulders. Their mother was ambitious and a bit of a golddigger, their father had an inflated sense of ego because of his family line. Whilst their parents were focused more on the business side and aren't currently morticians themselves, Noel and Leon were taught all of the hands-on aspects of the job. Having grown up with death as a constant and visible presence in their lives, as well as having very few chances to meet people outside of the family and the business, Noel and Leon took their parents' ideas around how the dead should be treated as gospel. The dead should be treated with the highest respect, disturbing the dead is immoral and proper burial/cremation rites should always be observed. Because of this, when Noel started showing signs of possessing some powerful necromancy magic around the age of 14 it started to stir tensions in the family.

Afraid of the nature of this new magic and of the damage it may do to their reputation if anyone found out about it, Noel’s parents heavily discouraged any use of it. Over the next few months as her magic got stronger, it became harder and harder for Noel to keep control over it. Without any form of guidance or knowledge her magic was unpredictable, and the stress of trying to keep the evidence of it hidden was taking an emotional toll. Leon, however, saw a positive side. Seeing that his twin was struggling and wanting to help, he managed to uncover old family documents revealing that Noel’s necromancy is inherited. Even though most of the evidence of previous necromancers has been erased, they come to the conclusion that it still must have skipped a lot of generations. They also find that some used necromancy for healing. But healing the dead isn’t very profitable when you’re in the business of burying the dead, so they kept this hidden. Every night, they’d go to the wine cellar and Leon would help Noel try to figure out how to use her magic. Eventually the toll of all the guilt and secrecy and tiredness started to wear them both down. Noel made a dangerous mistake with her magic and Leon died.

The next few years were very difficult for Noel and she spent them in a haze. Her parents were never cruel, but they were cold, and after this they became especially detached. It was out of the question that Noel would inherit the business, so the family was in a stalemate. Without Leon there to take the brunt of being the golden child, she tried to slot more into the role of being an ‘acceptable’ son. She let her hair be cut short like Leon’s, she stayed up late studying like Leon did, she learnt to live with being exhausted all the time from keeping her magic controlled. But none of it was ever enough. Eventually the tensions of everything unspoken between her and her mother and father became too much for Noel and she ran away aged 17, leaving the fortune of her family behind her. She spent the next 20 years wandering, drinking too much in scuzzy taverns, working odd jobs and carrying the weight of her guilt. The few places she’d been able to call ‘home’ never lasted. But she remained obsessed with trying to understand her weird upbringing and torn up over whether leaving was the right thing to do.

This whole time she’s refused to use her magic. But an idea slowly starts turning in her head: resurrection. Reanimation would be relatively simple, but isn’t an option for her (morally), so she sets out to learn as much as she can about her magic in order to eventually resurrect Leon. She'd spent a long time being miserable, never doing anything for herself and being terrified of using her magic, but having had the thought 'resurrecting my brother will definitely fix me' planted in her mind, she's been doing a lot better emotionally. Accepting that her magic is a part of her, but other people’s assumptions about necromancy don’t have to define the person that she is becomes a turning point for her. Noel slowly starts looking after herself better. She stops drinking, finally comes out as trans, buys some nice clothes and neatens herself up. Despite feeling the best she’s felt in a very long time because she finally feels she has a purpose, the goal she’s trying to reach is a little dubious. Leon probably wouldn't want to be resurrected, and even then, Noel's still completely living with this internalised idea that Leon's life matters more than her's. But this goal’s the only thing keeping her going, so she clings to it.

Despite being a bit awkward when talking to living people, Noel is always her most personable when speaking with the undead. She also has a strict moral code that makes her hesitant to do some of the more classic necromancer things. She can reanimate corpses and speak with dead people but she really doesn't like doing it. Noel has a great deal of sympathy for the undead, partly because of her upbringing, and partly because she doesn’t know what state she’ll be able to resurrect Leon in. To her, not treating the undead as people means no longer accepting her own brother as a person.

But Noel’s drive towards finding a way to bring Leon back can sometimes be dismissive or even cutthroat towards anything that she doesn’t see as bringing her closer to that goal. As she starts to get more and more desperate, Noel becomes more likely to make risky deals and more willing to abandon some of her personal morals. She doesn’t enjoy it; she's just become apathetic and would rather do anything than continue to wallow in her own self-loathing. Although she would never admit it, her ambition is led by needing to find a way to alleviate her obsession with her own guilt, rather than what might be best for Leon. She's mostly the party's healer, but her healing magic also comes from necromancy so it's dependent on sucking life out of other creatures in order to heal things. (The party doesn’t actually know that's how she's been healing them oopsie).

Noel is very aware that her magic is based on a principle of equivalent exchange. If she’s going to resurrect Leon, someone will have to die so that he can live. Perhaps it’s her way of proving herself to Leon and their parents, perhaps a part of her is afraid to face him, perhaps she just has undiagnosed depression, but she’s always known that person will have to be her. However now she’s starting to see herself in a different light, she has friends, she’s proud of her magic, she has more to live for than her debt to her brother. She’s starting to realise that she’s terrified to die.