Pythia Sterang was always odd. She had strange interests and strange dreams. Her parents thought it would pass—imaginative youth—but it didn’t. It got worse. Dreams spawned waking dreams which spawned obsessions. Some of her dreams came true—so she said—which only made things worse. She became erratic. Wild. An embarrassment to her well-to-do family who were hoping to climb the social ladder in Greyhawk. To get her out of sight (and hopefully out of mind) she was shipped off to Diamond Lake.
She didn’t mind much, at first. Wrapped up as she was in her obsessive documentation and analysis of her dreams and visions, Pythia barely even noticed. The funds from her family bought her a home north of the Vein, and she stayed there in seclusion, scribbling mad notes and theories on paper and—when she ran out of that—the walls and even her own flesh. In time, Pythia really did find herself out of mind—for even her own family forgot about her. They stopped sending money, and Pythia was forced to get what work she could, dancing when she was lucky, and working beds at the seedy brothels of the Vein when she was not. She wasn’t allowed to write on herself anymore—the ink splotches scared off the customers, but the constant scratching with inkpens had left scars in places—her flesh marked permanently by strange symbols and images from her dreams. Though pretty, her eccentric manners and the scars kept her from ever truly being popular. Most people call her Pythia Strange, a play on her family name. She currently works for coppers at the Midnight Salute.
But when a few locals discover an outdated map with some markings on it that aren’t on modern maps—but are found in the scars upon Pythia’s skin—she knows, finally, that she’s found her destiny. Finally, she’ll learn the truth of her visions.
