The Coalition of Nations began after the Fall of Varos Pass, when three nations were defeated in the same month and their refugees poured into a neutral border city called Halcyon Gate. The Ashkin Empire had already broken two treaties and installed puppet governors in neighboring states, and every nation that resisted alone was crushed in sequence. In the chaos, an old admiral, a mountain warlord, and a displaced diplomat shared the same bomb shelter during a night siege. They realized the Ashkin war machine was strongest when its enemies were isolated and slow. From that shelter came the first compact: pooled grain, pooled scouts, pooled artillery, pooled pilots, and pooled lies told to the empire until the coalition could move people and weapons faster than Ashkin intelligence could track them. The original signatories expected a temporary alliance, but the winter blockade at Halcyon Gate changed everything. Civilians survived because the coalition's improvised convoys ran antique trucks by moonlight, repaired radios with scavenged parts, and used obsolete rifles no one thought worth stealing. The Watershed Moment came during the Black Lantern Offensive, when the Ashkin tried to decapitate the newborn coalition by assassinating all three founders in one night. The attempt failed because Ashley Circle, then only a nameless cell of defectors and spies, exposed the strike and replaced the founders with decoys. After that night, the coalition stopped being a polite treaty and became a living machine of mutual defense, secrecy, and sacrifice.