Gilded Cage Regulars

TL;DR

The Gilded Cage has three faces you’ll come to know: Maxime runs the place from behind the bar and the microphone, and two regulars hold the front row every night, Apollo the ex-strongman who never claps, and Vera the retired headliner who grades every act. Maxime is your gate onto the stage; Apollo and Vera are the reward for holding a room well enough that they take an interest. Each regular runs a three-stage arc, and their arcs advance as you build the venue’s exhibition track (exhib_fem).

As of 0.3.1 the entire Gilded Cage is free content, including both regulars’ private stage-3 scenes, which were previously supporter-gated at the scene level.

Maxime, the owner and MC

Broad, middle-aged, burgundy jacket, rings on four fingers, a smirk that says he read you at the door. Maxime spots stage hunger in the audience, runs open auditions “when something worth lighting walks in”, and once you’re on the roster he manages your billing through check-ins after your sets. He is also the one who fills in the file on the house regulars when they start watching you. See his own page for the full audition arc: Maxime.

Apollo, front row left

Built like dockyard machinery and sixty-plus, Apollo was a carnival strongman thirty years back; now he watches, and he never claps, his applause is one fist pressed into an open palm and a one-inch bow. He speaks in single sentences and tips like a payroll (cabaret_regular_apollo 1 to 3).

• Stage 1 he introduces himself with nothing but his name and the biggest tip in the room.
• Stage 2 he tells you, in gravel, that you lift something heavier than his four hundred kilos: the whole crowd, at once.
• Stage 3 he waits in the curtained booth and, formal as a proposal, actually asks. It’s a clean fork: step into the booth, or decline gently. Declining costs nothing, “Then nothing changes. I still watch. I still tip”, and he keeps his word.

Vera, corner stool

Sixty if she’s a day, cheekbones like stage rigging, gin with no ice. Vera headlined the Cage twenty years ago (her portrait still hangs third from the left in the entry hall) and has watched every performer since from the corner stool. She stops you with two fingers and a barbed note and expects you to do something with it (cabaret_regular_vera 1 to 3).

• Stage 1 she tells you your third beat is early, every night: “The crowd wants to beg for it. Make them.”
• Stage 2 she repositions your whole arm through one slow arc at the bar, a masterclass in one gesture: “From the shoulder. The wrist is a liar.”
• Stage 3 she teaches you her last number, the one they still ask about, which needs two, and the lesson moves onto the dark stage itself. Take the stage with her, or beg off; the offer re-rolls another night if you decline.

The exhibition track

Both regulars’ arcs lean on exhib_fem, the venue’s own exhibition-femininity axis (separate from Femininity). Working the stage raises it, and Apollo and Vera each nudge it further when they take an interest, Apollo with his tips, Vera with her coaching, so their attention and your growing nerve reinforce each other.

Related

• Gilded Cage, the venue itself (getting on stage, the minigame, the late show).
• Maxime, Apollo, Vera, the full individual character pages.
• Red Light, the district the Cage sits in.