508th Pythia

508th Pythia
Main aliases:	The Pythia
Species:	Gallifreyan
Job:	Pythia
Affiliated with:	Empire of the Pythias, Sisterhood of Karn
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible
Appearances:	PROSE: Gallifrey - Notes on the Planet's Background PROSE: Lungbarrow PROSE: Gallifrey: A Rough Guide

The 508th Pythia, most commonly referred to as simply the Pythia like all her predecessors was the last Pythia who ruled Gallifrey before the rise of Rassilon. She founded the Sisterhood of Karn as her final legacy by sending her followers to a safe exile on Karn before she committed suicide.

Biography

Near the end of her reign, the 508th Pythia was unable to see into the future. She recruited Vael, a Gallifreyan skilled in psychic powers, as her successor and spy on Rassilon and his Neo-Technologists. As the Pythia awaited Vael's return, she was visited and taunted by Rassilon, who predicted an end to her empire of superstition. When she could no longer see the future clearly, she retreated into a world of her own, waiting for Vael to return; however, as she withdrew from public life, support for Rassilon and his followers grew.

The Pythia sent her loyal followers to steal the eye of a Sphinx, the Sphinx of Thule killed by the hero Prydonius, in the hope that it would restore her power to see the future. Desperate to find Vael, she gouged out her own eye and put that of the Sphinx in its place. The Pythia invaded Vael's mind, demanding to know what was happening with him, but he resisted her. The Seventh Doctor sensed someone looking out at him from Vael's mind. Despite the risk, he agreed to an exchange of questions and learned that he was speaking to the Pythia, matriarch of Gallifrey, and was forced to tell her that she would be the last of her kind.

Pythia sent her followers to the planet Karn, issued her curse of sterility, and threw herself into the Crevasse of Memories That Will Be below the Cavern of Prophecy. Her exiled followers would adopt the title of the Sisterhood of Karn. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) The curse sent massive repercussions through the meta-reality of the space-time continuum, such that Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart met the Pythia in a dream. (PROSE: Transit)

She later appeared as one of the carrion birds on the Gate of the Past or Future in the astral plane. Chris Cwej and the Seventh Doctor saw her as a harpy or vulture with an eyepatch and jewels in her feathers. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)