For over 1000 years now, the nations of Gaea have been at peace. This is partly because there are only three or four nations capable of waging war, and none of them particularly want to. Let's list them, shall we?

First we have Equestria, the largest one. Equestria is a massive nation, inhabited almost entirely by ponies. Equestria is very peaceful, being ruled by a number of beings who are practically gods.

The second is Griffonia. Also very large, Griffonia is very traditional, and has a large army. The only reason they haven't taken over the world yet is because they are scared of the princesses of Equestria.

Next, in third place is the Changeling Republic. Made up of a number of hives, the queens of those hives form a council that decides what does what to who and why. They are the most fair of these nations, despite the claims of Equestria and Griffonia.

The fourth and final nation is not a country by most definitions, which is why I said three or four. The fourth nation is the Everfree Anarchy. No joke, that is actually what they call themselves as a nation. The Anarchy is the "governing" body of the Everfree Forest, which is the only forest in all Gaea that has an entire nation inside it.

These three realms have existed in (relative) peace and harmony for 1000 years. Then, five years ago, everything dissolved into chaos. It began with the return of Nightmare Moon. She invaded the Everfree, and the Everfree Anarchy took this as a declaration of war from Equestria. The leader of the Anarchy met with Princess Celestia in Canterlot three months after the incident. It didn't go down so well.

"This is an outrage!" The leader of the Everfree Anarchy roared. He was a very terrifying figure, especially when he was outfitted for battle. Naz-Mig was terrifying normally, being a Terror-Namdag gave you that. He was over 10 feet tall, very heavy, immensely strong and with a coating of nasty spikes. His chitin was tougher than dragonhide, and his longest teeth were the size of butcher knives. Terror-Namdaggs had poisonous saliva and sprayed it everywhere when they roared, so Princess Celestia had good reason to flinch. She attempted to say something that wouldn't make Naz-Mig even more angry.

"I am sorry that this happened to your country, but Nightmare Moon was not working for Equestria. She has now been reformed, and will not harm you anymore." Celestia calmly said.

"Do you expect me to believe that?!" Naz-Mig howled. "Nightmare Moon is a pony, and all ponies live and work in Equestria! She must be working for you! Also, she must be your sister, as she is an alicorn, isn't she?" Celestia realized that Naz-Mig was a lot smarter than he seemed. "She must be a princess!" He bellowed. "Only princesses are alicorns!"

"Nightmare Moon was my sister, Princess Luna. But she has been reformed by the power of the Elements of Harmony."

Naz-Mig considered this for a moment. "Very well," He finally said. "I will believe you. But another attack will not be tolerated. Do you understand?!" He roared.

"Yes."

After that, things only got worse. When Discord attacked, the Everfree was protected by the ancient elemental magic that had protected it for generations. But the Changeling Republic suffered. Discord's chaos magic infected the food supply of many hives with malice, which was not a particularly good thing. The Republic decided to gather food from Equestria, rather than their usual target, Egypt. While Egypt was used to the changelings coming to feed, Equestria wasn't. And in the aftermath, the changeling leaders were forced to apologize.

"I believe you have something to say." Celestia looked disdainfully at the four ornate changelings standing before her. They were the queens of the four largest changeling hives.

"We apologize for forcefully attempting to gather love from the ponies of Equestria." The most decorated changeling said. She was the queen of the largest changeling hive, Vitramax. The queen of a hive took the name of their hive when they became queen, so her name was Vitramax as well.

Celestia gestured towards the exit with her face a mask. Before they left, one of the queens asked Celestia a question. "Would you let us gather love from Equestria peacefully?"

Celestia answered coldly. "No."

Although the attempt failed, the Changeling Republic survived without going hungry. The battle, though short, showed Equestria that their army was ill equipped and trained to defend their land. So the Royal Guard was reformed and built up stronger. The events pertaining to King Sombra did very little on the international scale, but the ascension of Twilight Sparkle sure did. The Republic was unconcerned by the appearance of a fourth princess, the Anarchy was annoyed but remained quiet, but Griffonia was outraged.

"How can you let this happen?!" Griffaticus, the ruler of Griffonia, screamed. "You cannot make a new princess without informing the other nations beforehand! It's cheating! It isn't fair to the rest of us! We inform you before we elect a new Wing General! You Informed us when you decided to alicornify Cadence!"

"I know but-" Celestia began, but was cut off.

"But?? But what??" Griffaticus shrieked. "But nothing! You went behind our backs! How are we expected to trust you if you do things that we only find out about later?"

Celestia wisely remained silent.

"Tell us about any important decisions before you put them into effect."

"Yes." Was all Celestia said.

Clearly, none of the four were particularly happy with Equestria. They were all plotting their revenge through the mirror incident, and the Anarchy was almost ready to have their revenge when the strangler vines attacked and they were put under suspicion.

"You think we did it?!?" Naz-Mig roared in outrage. The Terror-Namdag was even more angry than normal. He was usually pretty angry, but today he was truly outraged. Normally, his level of anger was comparable to the energy output of a hot spring. Today, his anger was comparable to an erupting supervolcano. Celestia did her best to not cower away in terror or run away screaming like a filly. Her best wasn't good enough. She wilted under the next explosion of pure rage Naz-Mig let loose.

"Can you even see how damaged my throne room is?!?" Naz-Mig howled. "It's wrecked!! If not for the Elements of Harmony, the forest would have been torn apart by those vines!!! We would not have done it no matter what!! You must either be an idiot or senile to not see that we would not have done this!!!"

Naz-Mig slumped back, clearly exhausted by his display of anger. "I am sorry. I did not mean to insult you. I have been under a lot of stress lately, and the Anarchy is hard to rule normally." He rose onto four legs, leaving his remaining two for use as manipulation appendages. "Please accept my apologies."

Celestia smiled a trifle nervously. "I accept your apology."

"Thank you, Princess."

However, the true last straw was the Tirek incident. He rampaged, completely unchecked, across most of the world. The Elements of Harmony were able to stop him, but far too late. Chaos reigned for over a week as Lord Tirek stole the magic of everypony in Equestria. All the other nations of the world were marshaling their forces to defeat Tirek when the Elements made a comeback. They defeated Tirek and regained the magic of the world, but didn't help the other nations that had been affected. This resulted in a rather heated argument disguised as a meeting.

"Why aren't the Elements helping us?" Griffaticus snarled. "We got affected as badly as Equestria! If not worse!!"

"I agree." Vitramax said, nodding. "The changelings got drained too! All we got was our magic back. We need help!"

"The forest was hit harder than any of you combined!!" Naz-Mig roared. "The Anarchy desperately needs help!! Tirek and the Element of Magic fought their battle in the Everfree!! They should help us to pay for the damage they dealt, if not to help a fellow nation in desperate need!!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Twilight Sparkle, the aforementioned Element of Magic, protested. "I had to fight Tirek! He was going to destroy even more if left unchecked!"

"Ah! I see. He was going to destroy even more. I'd say you made all the difference, eh? You stopped all that extra damage being done. But I'd say you did a lot more damage. So, nothing really changed, now then, did it? IT SURE AS ***** DIDN'T!!!!!!!!" Naz-Mig roared, spitting out a particularly nasty curse word in the last sentence.

"I have to agree with Naz-Mig here, even if I don't approve of his language." Vitramax said, shooting a disapproving glare at Naz-Mig as she did so. "Tirek did a lot of damage, but so did you, Princess Twilight. Remember, you had the combined powers of four alicorns inside you at the time."

"Yes, but that is beside the point." Princess Celestia said. "The point actually is, we don't have the resources to provide aid to every country asking for our aid."

Griffaticus snorted in disdain. "Not enough resources? Equestria is dripping in resources. Look at this room alone! It is highly decorated, very large, and for some reason smells extremely nice, considering the assortment of creatures inside it." He looked at Naz-Mig as he said the last part. "I would say that you have more than enough resources to help us and continue rebuilding Equestria."

"We may have enough resources, but we don't have the right kinds. Our food supply is low, our weather is out of control, and we are running low on almost everything else that we or you need." Celestia protested.

"Do you have fertiliser?" Naz-Mig asked. "Or you running out of that too?"

"Umm... No?" Celestia said, clearly confused.

"Good. We'll take as much as you will let us. And magic regrowers too."

"Why exactly do you need fertiliser?" Twilight asked.

"Trees." Was all that Naz-Mig said as he left the room on all six of his legs.

All the nations affected found different ways to cope with the disaster. The Everfree Anarchy got off the easiest. Equestria gave them several dozen tons of fertiliser and magic regrower liquid and the woods were back in no time. Griffonia, being the farthest away from the incident, got off the second easiest. The Changeling Republic got off second hardest. Their nation was only affected magically, it was physically unharmed. Equestria was, unsurprisingly, the most affected. Tirek had rampaged across a huge area of land, smashing aside everything in his sight. It took a long time in Equestrian terms to rebuild, just over a year. However, the Tirek incident was nothing compared to what was next.

Next was the ascension of the Marked of Kane.

Author's Note

In case you were wondering what in high heaven this chapter is about, it's to introduce us to the other nations and leaders that will be involved in the war, at least on a large scale. There will be some other nations in this, but the four described above are the main ones.