Pythia

The Pythia was a name as much as a title of the matriarchal leaders of the planet Gallifrey prior to Rassilon. They possessed powerful psychic powers and the power of precognition. The Pythia ruled a Gallifrey which was governed by mystery and superstition, which later histories contrasted with the reason and science of the Rassilon Era. The 389th Pythia was given a jewelled periapt by the legendary hero Ao.

The war between Rassilion and the female priesthood of the Pythia generated the Great Schism.

History
Near the end of her reign, the last Pythia was unable to see into the future. She recruited Vael, a Gallifreyan skilled in psychic powers, as her sucessor and to spy upon Rassilon and his Neo-Technologists. As the Pythia awaits Vael's return, she is visited by Rassilon, who taunts her, predicting 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, but as she withdrawed from public life, support for Rassilon and his followers begun to grow. The Pythia send her loyal followers to steal the eye of a Sphinx, a foreseer killed by the hero Prydonius, in the hope that it would restore her power to see the future. Desperate to find Vael, she gouges out her own eye and puts that of the Sphinx in its place. The Pythia invaded Vael's mind, demanding to know what is 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, cursed Gallifrey with sterility and threw herself into an abyss below her temple. Pythia's followers would adopt the title of the Sisterhood of Karn. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

As a result of the curse, Gallifreyan] (and Time Lords) could no longer reproduce naturally, so they created the Looms. During the Doctor's seventh incarnation, the curse was lifted, so his former human companion, Leela, and her Time Lord husband, Andred, could conceive a child together. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) The Book of the War would later never mention a curse at all, asserting that the sterility of the Great Houses was actually a result of the anchoring of the thread. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

There were, however, some instances of womb-born children on Gallifrey between the curse and Leela's pregnancy, although Rassilon issued a decree that made them illegal. In at least one instance, it was enforced by abortion and execution. (PROSE: Cold Fusion, The Infinity Doctors)

The Sisterhood of Karn and Lady Peinforte possessed the remnants of the Pythia's power, (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) and Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart would dream of her, as the Pythia's curse would send massive repercussions through the meta-reality of the space-time continuum. (PROSE: Transit)

In a parallel universe where the Sixth Doctor led the Time Lords in the War in Heaven, a time dreadnought was named the Blind Visage of the Pythia. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

In another parallel universe where the Doctor never left Gallifrey, through the Possibility Tree, he could see a Gallifrey where "sorcery ruled instead of science", implying a world in which Pythia's rule never ended. (AUDIO: Auld Mortality)

Behind the scenes

 * DWM 299 contained a "Gallifreyan panorama" illustrated by Robin Smith. It featured images of Pythia, Rassilon, and Omega in the foreground with Bowships, Great Vampires, and a domed city in the background.
 * Lance Parkin's Executive Action, published in 2001's Walking in Eternity, further clarifies the conflict between the Womb-born and the Loomed Time Lords seen in Cold Fusion and mentioned in The Infinity Doctors, and strongly implying Rassilon merely used the Pythia's curse to force societal change upon the Gallifreyans.

Pythia