5th August 2026

Part 2 of the Nobbybanks series

The family took it well, in the sense that nobody said anything directly, and badly, in the sense that everyone’s silence made it very clear what they thought.

There was a path available to him, once his instructors noticed where his attention actually lived. The Uncrowned run more than knife-work — deep in Dalaran‘s Underbelly, in the Hall of Shadows, sits a market that doesn’t officially exist, dealing in items that don’t officially exist either, moved by people who very much do. Nobbybanks was offered a seat at that table. A real one. Black Market trading — connected, dangerous, exactly in keeping with a family that had spent generations building a reputation nobody was supposed to be able to name out loud.

He turned it down.

Not out of caution, though everyone assumed caution at the time and he’s never corrected them. He turned it down because he did the numbers privately, the way he does most things, and worked out that the ordinary, fully legal Auction House — taxed, regulated, visible to anyone who cared to look — moved more volume in a single afternoon than the Black Market managed in a week of careful secrecy. The secrecy was the expensive part. Nobody was paying a premium for the thrill of it once you accounted for what the thrill actually cost.

Nobbybear heard about the decision and didn’t speak to him for a month. It wasn’t the legality that offended him. It was the lack of ambition. “You had a seat at the real table,” he said, eventually, breaking the silence only to make his disappointment official, “and you chose the boring one.” He was wearing the bear hat at the time. Nobbybanks has never been able to take the sentiment fully seriously since.

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More in the Nobbybanks series

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