For her role in Planetfall, Ebner was rewarded as the Chief Judge at the U.N. Court of Justice of the Peacekeeping Forces. She was able to settle differences between the colonists in an orderly fashion, dispensing the righteousness she had always sought in her career. If she had remained in her role decades later, after Reunion had been achieved and the Planetary Council had been created, she was likely to have become the Supreme Justice of the Chiron Court. But after a few mission years, shortly after receiving the Longevity Vaccine, Chief Judge Ebner resigned her commission and returned to politics. By then the U.N. INTEGRIN had existed for quite some time, founded by the original German and Middle-European colonists who had accompanied her on Unity, their fervor sustained by ex-Spartan and ex-Anarchist members. Finally accepting their call to leadership, she took her party on the road to visit the other factions, posing not as a Peacekeeper envoy but as an independent activist.

Ebner received a moderate reception at Noah's Rainbow, where she praised the Lord's Believers for remembering the lessons of Earth, of the mistakes they could still learn from. She reminded Sister Godwinson that Planet's environment was still God-given, and thus deserved stewardship equal to if not exceeding that of lost Earth's. "Green Dominionism" became a theological fad for some years among the Believers, though ultimately her message fell hollow in the face of increasing mindworm attacks.

Ebner approached the University of Planet at Climactic Research, where Academician Zakharov seemed bored of her diplomatic blandishments and philosophical jargon, but his ears perked up when she praised the University's innovation and offered clean tech that her Peacekeeper INTEGRIN scientists had developed. Granted a full tour that took her as far as Mendelev College, Ebner spoke directly to the student body on sustainability and the need to question established authority, even scientific. This would later inspire the novel development of talent riots half a decade later, as the University INTEGRIN became the center of a movement for up-and-coming young professors to demand greater transparency from the Trustees. While the Academician ordered these riots be put down with... less than salubrious means, the party was too popular to be banned and remained a rallying cause within the faction for generations.

Neither Chairman Yang nor Colonel Santiago granted Ebner an audience. The former had had enough of democratic-minded idealists cluttering up his perfect utopia (this was around the time of the Free Drone movement), and the latter had had enough of anti-establishment individualists converting stalwart soldiers away from her cause. Both recognized her as a Peacekeeper citizen that was engaging in unofficial diplomacy and calmly asked her to leave their territory.

Preferring to improve on an established system from within, Lena approached Lady Skye and brought her praxis of environmental resilience. Despite the success of the U.N. INTEGRIN, Lal's continued stonewalling of elections made the faction into a virtual one-party state controlled by his personal loyalists, the empowered bureaucrats of the U.N. on Planet. So Gaia's Stepdaughters seemed a promising second home for Ebner's party. While the lady had no intention of giving up her immortal benevolent autocracy any more than any other faction leader, she did receive Ebner's green techno-activists warmly, and they spent some time there, bolstering the native Gaian bio-rationalists and political Greens, organizing those who were not too keen on Skye's more- pantheistic- instincts. Ultimately, Skye and Ebner found intractable differences between their camps. The Chief Judge believed in environmentalism in service of the people- past mistakes had to be avoided so that future generations would suffer. The Lady believed that the environment was an end to itself, and that politics were a necessary evil that were necessarily made irrelevant by the natural world. But Ebner loved politicking so.

Morgan Industries proved to be surprisingly receptive to INTEGRIN. Having dealt with such money-makers in the past, Ebner cited chapter and verse from U.N. regulations on inter-faction commerce and declared that CEO Morgan's corporation to be an exemplar of forward-thinking that only needed a few tweaks for maximal operational efficiency in congruence with U.N. environmental standards. While its corporate governance remained opaque, it did have its own attempts at building green tech, at least for the sake of positive P.R. from Gaians or Peacekeeper consumers. Visiting these redheaded stepchildren product divisions, Ebner spoke to their managers and line workers alike, encouraging them to make a play for their chairman's attention, providing design insights from user perspectives, and even some technical suggestions from her time spent working with Life Support systems.

With her help, Morgan Climate Control prototyped a breakthrough system that improved hab air quality and temperature regulation at half the materials cost of the previous model, incorporating organic air scrubbers invented by INTEGRIN scientists. Breathe-o-Smart was a hit even beyond the faction, with interested customers from all over the colonies. For this work, Nwabudike Morgan himself decided to hire Ebner on as a consultant, admitting her followers as resident contractors to be housed in the campus parks of Morgan Industries. After their time at Peacekeeping Force's simple bases, the Gaia's Stepdaughters' - rustic facilities, and on the road dodging mindworms, her INTEGRIN were elated to stay and take up Morganite work visas.

Lena Ebner remains a guest of Morgan Industries to this day. She has overseen nearly a dozen product launches, worked with over half that many corporate divisions, written uncountable company speeches and improved copy for innumerable marketing campaigns, all sculpted by INTEGRIN philosophy. The Morgan branch of INTEGRIN is as well-staffed as ever, eagerly finding ways to improve Morgan's sustainability practices, but also mostly to ensure that the company has an eco-friendly corporate culture. The workers may have never heard of the concept of a union, but their bases are powered by carbon-neutral solar collectors. (In fact, Middle-European designs brought by the movement greatly increased generational efficiency, which boosted Morgan's energy stores greatly.) The Morgan Blue Sky and Morgan PholusShot skunkwork divisions have also been assigned to Morgan INTEGRIN, allowing them to experiment with everything from environmental urban design to transmodern transportation systems. These projects all neatly quarantined behind their own spaces, inaccessible to other Morgan employees, of course.

And so, Ebner gets her chance to build the technocratic solutions for the future, while Morgan gets his own free R&D subsidiary, a lot of nice corporate philanthropy brownie points, and a new generation of brand ambassadors, all helping to shine Morgan Industries' star among the customers of Planet. It's a partnership that should give Ebner some pause- but she gets such an expanded audience through this role, and she was just promoted to Honorary Vice-President of Morgan GreenWorks a Mission Year ago. Why, surely upping the company's environmental standards will be what it takes to make Chiron a better place! Perhaps with Ebner's influence, what serves Morgan Industries, serves Planet. Perhaps.

From his gleaming, floor-sized office at the top of HQ, Nwabudike Morgan reads the quarterly reports with piqued interest. Organic fungal remedies from Morgan Metagenics, mindworm behavior holo-docs from Morgan Studios, even early-age out-of-base safaris protected by heavily armed guards for high paying members of Morgan StellarTots, there was a clear trend in consumer spending habits. He ponders, his keenly-tuned acumen crunching thousands of spreadsheets in his mind. Then, glancing at one of the paintings adorning his walls, a landscape of the African savannah with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background, he pauses. For a moment, he is touched by the vivid colors of the Serengeti, the rugged wildebeest, graceful antelope, the pride of lions hidden in the underbrush. Then his mind flips back. Customers love beauty- nature is in! and so, Morgan quickly turns back to his desk, thoughts of new product lines and bundled services apparating quicker than he has a chance to jot them all down.

Meanwhile, deep in the underlevel of Morgan Bank, where the lowest compensated and least luxurious Morganite citizens dwell in squalor between night shifts as energy investment firm interns or as medical experiment subjects, a tattered flier drifts down, having fallen out of some gleaming edifice perched on the impossibly high upper platforms. Depicting a stylized logo of a sapling on its cover, with words both English and in German, the underfolk gather around it in curiosity. "GREEN MARKETS: A NEW PARADIGM FOR ALL PEOPLE" they read. And with that, Ebner's weltgeist is introduced to the drones of Morgan Industries...

Back at U.N. Headquarters

While Lal was both figurehead and supreme leader of the Peacekeeping Forces, with other notable citizens including science advisor Dr. Kakani and his son Jahn, the government was often run by the triumvirate of Barre, Bolivar, and Ebner, representing the People (the colonists), the Military (peacekeeping forces), and the Law (U.N. Charter). While there was some overlap between Barre's military-peacekeeper early background and Ebner's techno-green populism, this was the popular conception of Lal's prime deputies.

Despite Ebner's indefinite departure a small U.N. INTEGRIN remained in-faction, kicking up a fuss and pushing for strong environmental policies and technocratic solutions from exasperated Peacekeeper bureaucrats. Shortly after, Kishk takes up the third spot, beloved as the explorer-shepherdess-guardian of her people, the former captives of Unity. The Al Falah's tradition of barter and her own energetic personality also makes her savvy with mercantile matters, leading to trade duels with Hutama and even vendor meetings with Ebner during visits to Morgan Industries. With their contrasting ages and personal styles, Kishk often takes the role of bad cop in trade negotiations, with Barre as the good cop.

Notes:

I wanted to give INTEGRIN a home beyond the straightforward Peacekeeper or Gaian routes. I considered making Ebner's belief in technocratic solutions leading her to compromise on her democratic beliefs and join Zakharov, the ultimate technocrat. But she's an activist for people power, so I think a big business that's got a very dynamic culture might be a potential place for her to be at for a while. Morgan Industries is definitely big into technological solutions, not for their own sake but for a thriving market- to serve customers. Nowadays corporations, often pursue seemingly pure and socially conscious policies for good PR. This sometimes involves getting celebrities to endorse their moral character, which is sort of what's happening here. Basically, Ebner and INTEGRIN is helping greenwashing, at least for now.

Ebner is motivated by spreading her message, and is interested in technological solutions (compared to say the Gaians), so she might view working with Morgan as a crude but effective tool for getting her platform across to more people, and she does see Morgan's investment in green tech to be a good thing. (Even if she might signing her own devil's deal, and that green tech might be outnumbered by all the other stuff the company does.) She's getting the exposure she craves, and INTEGRIN is getting a chance to engage in activism even if it ends up being activity for the sake of it, and receiving the comfy comforts of living in this new faction to boot. But who knows- with a growing green presence in the company, Morgan Industries' culture can change for the Planet.

Post-Ebner, the Peacekeeper government embodies the SMAC priorities: Arshia (Explore), Barre (Build), Bolivar (Conquer), with Lal as the head and let's say he's got the strong natural philosopher/social scientist side to him as hinted by the tech quotes (Discover)