From the outside, there’s very little to recommend the Barrel & Bullet. The saloon’s street-facing entrance can be accessed via a sturdy wooden ramp attached to a far less sturdy, low, asymmetrical porch. The porch’s effect of cheapening the establishment’s appearance from the get-go is an ironic result, considering it was built to enhance the saloon’s appearance, not worsen it. It was also meant to attract more customers—one owner even had grand ambitions of setting out some simple lounge chairs—but the smoggy Ferrous Quarter isn’t exactly known as a great place for outdoor congregating, and so those plans swiftly fell apart. Currently, the neglected platform’s only function is to hold several of the saloon’s namesake barrels, all empty and rotten. The porch leads directly into the heart of the saloon: the taproom.

Although a large chamber with high ceilings and wagon-wheel chandeliers, the taproom still feels cramped and congested. Its tables are often at capacity, with additional patrons standing around and resting their drinks, plates, or cards on barrels. The taproom’s walls are cluttered with faded but colorful murals, clockwork devices in various states of working order, and other bric-a-brac collected over the decades and passed down from owner to owner; Foebe Dunsmith has respected this tradition by adding her own touches while also keeping up all the many curios she inherited.

A kingdom forged during the Age of Destiny by a necromancer of incredible power and insidious vision, Geb is now renowned as a land of the undead, and while plantations filled with zombie labourers may stick in the mind, there is much, much more to Geb.

Until the coming of the archmage Nex, Geb was a reasonably peaceful nation. In -892 Ar, Nex's expansion southward into Geb ignited the most infamous magical rivalry in Golarion's history as Geb plunged the land into war with neighbouring Nex (named in honour of the nation's archmage ruler). During one of the most deadly exchange of spell power, the necromancer Geb sucked the life from most of the land surrounding the cities of neighbouring Nex by the use of wishes. In return, Nex blighted the lands of Geb with a series of cataclysms that decimated the population. Geb responded by animating casualties into legions of the walking dead, beginning Geb's reliance on undead.

The nation now known as Nex grew up around the ancient city-state of Quantium. During the Age of Destiny, the ambitious archmage Nex gained control over Quantium and subjugated the nearby cities of Oenopion and Ecanus, which became the foundation of the kingdom of Nex. Over the next centuries, Nex travelled Golarion and the Great Beyond, brought the treasures he found to his kingdom, trained hundreds of wizards in the secrets he discovered, and used wish-level magic to improve and protect his realm.

The war between Nex and Geb turned once-green fields into a wasteland, but it also altered how magic works in the region. The devastation created areas devoid of magic—pockets where magic simply does not work at all. In other areas, the laws of reality themselves have been damaged, and magic becomes dangerously wild and unpredictable. This is known as primal magic, and it sometimes lashes the land with spontaneous waves of raw magical energy. These areas are not stable, often alternating between states of dead magic, primal magic, and normal magic, although the primal magic state is the most common.

To make matters worse, another by-product of the war is that numerous tough and deadly monsters now roam the region.