Emberhexe is a tall, weird-looking grey cyborg earth pony. She has an autotelekinetic backback for flying and uses her cyborg implants for magic and other purposes. She is the last survivor of a community of precatastrophic ponies that hid out in a vault under Canterlot for centuries but died out due to inbreeding depression.
Emberhexe ventures out into the Everfree for resources in a flying machine of her own construction, made from scavenged materials. It is heavily armed due to the threat of Everfree fauna (and flora for that matter). Emberhex will confront the AEC when it enters her "territory" and call it, but with incompatible protocols (a puzzle) and demand they land.
If the party lands, the Weathermanes, a resistance group, will attack Emberhex (and them, incidentally) by kiteing monsters (which Jelle's character can call off); conversely if the party doesn't land and is shot down (or don't solve the puzzle in time) Emberhex will come to capture them and the same scenario plays out albeit with the party's relationship with Emberhex out to a rockier start.
Damage to the AEC - should be repairable with Emberhex's facilities which can be obtained by befriending or defeating (or both) her.
Emberhex has been spraying the ponies in the forest with chemicals from her aircraft, which is protecting them from the crystal forest infestation, but also making them feel sick and weak in the immediate aftermath of dosing; they think they are protected from the CF by herbs, but actually it's Emberhex. A side effect of the spraying however was that the chemical enabled everfree life to hybridize with the crystal forest (the 'adaptive biochemical synthesis' of the everfree allowed it to coopt the mechanism; herbicides never worked on the everfree either). Before the spraying,