This odd ancient Vortigaunt made the difficult journey from his home world to Xen, to Earth, and finally to Primal Earth seemingly to spite his people. Maybe he's always felt a kind of kinship with his eldest friend, the Mystery? Noah's own people, while they tend not to actively shun him, have generally considered him to be just a crazy old coot of a being. One of those 'until you get to know him' types, Noah is surprisingly spry for someone his age.

Even for the currently-living Vorts, Noah is quite old. Only a scant handful of others can claim to have been born on their homeworld - most were born on Xen, and none on Earth since there are ... sadly, no more females available. Noah is also unique in that he remembers far more about their homeworld than those slightly younger than him: he alone is able to remember the 'old Vort' speech, a dialect that was hardly in use when he named Nach'lih kallah-vahh some twelve thousand years ago. But because the pair sometimes needed privacy even among other Vorts, he would lapse into this slightly more flowing and certainly more complicated speech and only kallah-vahh understands him fully.

Noah - like all Vortikind - did not start out with a name. They do not typically take individual names when they're in their own communities, and certainly they don't refer to each other that way, at least to Human ears and minds. Since they communicate both telepathically and vocally, using a method they refer to as 'Flux-shifting', far more meaning can be conveyed with the Vortal side of that than the vocal. But when they came to Xen, their captor, a gigantic creature of an even older race somewhat related to them (but very distantly) demanded they call it: Nihilanth. The act of taking a name forcibly was a bit offensive to them, but they had no choice in the matter. It was either follow Nihilanth to Xen or face complete destruction by Ulathoi.

When they reached Earth, and discovered that they did indeed need names in order for the Humans locally to understand who they were talking to, Noah did the unthinkable: he named himself. Most of the Vorts which arrived and subsequently were taken in by the Black Mesa facility, including Noah, were named with a slightly Biblical method - and his namesake seemed appropriate. In Vortigese it sounds considerably different, zurr'chackt kurr'chackt bim tash vech, he balances the future and past to teach others his findings, 'he collects opinions of future-past events'. It simply occurred to him that he does collect many things - as Noah's story implies. To preserve the future, and to instruct the young - that was always his role even when he was 'young'. Noah has a strong connection to the youth of the Enrichment Center, and that of the refugees in Black Mesa. But also, specifically, he helped instruct Paxton when he was in his first stages of truly becoming the Mystery's heir.

Noah very likely knew that Paxton would eventually accept that role, though his instruction led him down many different paths first. It was all done with the Mystery's explicit approval, even though other Vorts wouldn't even speak of Xkah'shuu-vahh or even Nach'lih kallah-vahh for that matter. Noah was the only one of them willing enough to make deals with the Convocation entity, though he's never explained quite why. When kallah-vahh becomes a bit guilt-ridden over having effectively sold the Vorts into slavery to Nihilanth, Noah usually reminds him: it took both of them to make that pact. He seems to feel no shame in admitting his own role that sent their people to Xen and thousands of years of enforced work. Noah does however still harbor a bit of bitterness, and far more sadness, over the fact that - even accidentally - there will be no more Vortigaunt children for him to teach. He eagerly picked up on instructing young Humans who were Vortally talented, possibly to give himself some way of exercising his skills.

Though old, Noah has always managed a kind of impish, child-like wonder at everything around him. In his role as namer, this seems completely natural. While he does form opinions, he also doesn't necessarily let those opinions taint his knowledge outright - he names somoene or something based on what it is, and can be, rather than what he wants it to be. If he had his choice, he would have called Paxton something markedly different than Xkah'shuu-vahh, the Inheritor of the Mystery. But that name was never truly voiced, and has no place in the Vortessence. In traveling to Earth, he had to adjust physically to the heavier gravity as well as the more solid physical properties there - but coming to Primal Earth and Paragon City seems to have revitalized him a bit. Since he claims that the Vortessence flows 'more willingly' than the other Earth, he seems not only healthier but more spry than ever.

He is, however, still into everything. He is what could be called an incurable lookie-loo - always listening to conversations, always overhearing mental communication, and generally butting in if he thinks he has something to add. This can come in the form of simply standing there staring at you with his strange alien eyes unblinking, but also might be found with his Vortal presence - a blue-white and indigo watery Vortal glow. Noah has many odd habits; he will eat things he finds dead on the ground, he enjoys 'sitting on things' (mostly because his legs are spindly and very, very tired) (and yes, that's odd for Vorts), he has kept the neck and wrist braces that Nihilanth used to control the Vorts while on Xen - others have done this too, but sometimes he wears them.

When Noah and the other Vorts discovered Paxton's lih separated from his kallah on Xen, during the week Paxton was in a coma on Earth, it was primarily to seek-and-destroy the Human invaders. While Nihilanth still lived, their patrols spotted him flitting around the odd broken landscape. However, during that week, Gordon Freeman killed Nihilanth, and freed the Vorts from their enforced patrolling. They knew that the child was still there in some form, but also could sense that his life-force was dwindling rapidly - mostly because it was separated from his body in another dimension. To have passed through the barrier at all at his age and at his level of skill, Noah had asserted to his peers, was a spectacular feat. If Noah had not intervened and sent Paxton, named Xkah'shuu-vahh, back to his form, the boy would have died entirely. Other Vorts present might have simply let that happen, but Noah knew better - he knew that his peers would hate the name bestowed, the Vahh 'family' had truly begun. Because he would not force the issue, shuu but not thoi was used in that name. Kin, but not family - not yet. Of all the Vorts on Earth, Noah knows the value of family.

All of that said, he's still a Vortigaunt used to much labor, throwing energy around to protect the young or keep territory clearly outlined. He understands that there are 'good guys and bad guys' in Paragon, and is happy to side with the heroes. Because he does remember his days on their old Homeworld, however, he feels oddly at ease in places where Humans hardly dare to tread: the Shadow Shard, Eden and the Hive seem to be locations that Noah wants to explore rather than fight over. Though he sees that the Devouring Earth and other such creatures are destructive to a point, he also finds their constructed hive areas to be almost like those he lived in thousands of years before. He has also discovered that, even though it's not quite the same energy, there are certain plants and eggs of creatures in those odd realms that can supply his lih in the same manner that the Antlion larva had on their homeworld and later Earth. Use of the larval extract allows the imbiber to break down the barriers between the physical realm and the energy realm - bringing the two together in a kind of 'high', a very real sense of the universe can be found by those who use this technique and have Vortal senses. Those that don't often discover that Antlion eggs taste horrid and leave a very unpleasant aftertaste in the back of their brain.

Noah might be old and crazy, but he's our old and crazy Vort.