Brief Overview
Callista is a young, white American woman who grew up in Innsmouth, Massachusetts and left prior to the town's destruction in 1928. (Please see H. P. Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth for details regarding the town and its curious inhabitants). Like many residents of Innsmouth, she is a Deep One. Unlike other Deep Ones, however, Callista has struck a bargain with the piscine priests of Father Dagon in order to return to life on land following her transformation into an eldritch being of the sea.
Early Life
Callista's mother, Martha Blackwell, was a typical Innsmouth local, but her father, Arnold Curnow, was of foreign blood and temperament
(i.e. he was an eccentric antiquarian hailing from Arkham, Massachusetts). After their rushed marriage following Callista's conception, Martha insisted on remaining in Innsmouth and urged Arnold to settle with her there. Arnold agreed, wanting his daughter to enjoy a more rural and wholesome
life at the seaside, but kept up a steady stream of correspondence with his brother, Geoff Curnow, who was a police constable in Arkham.
Callista grew up as an especially bright girl who outpaced the other students in the town's one-room schoolhouse. Life in Innsmouth was clearly not enough for Callista, but Martha refused to allow anything more than the occasional visit to Arkham to keep up appearances with her paternal uncle.
As Callista blossomed, however, her father faded. Martha, now beginning her transformation into a Deep One, was draining Arnold of life energy. His letters to Geoff grew less frequent, and he began experiencing severe memory problems. Suspecting that something was amiss, Geoff did some research into Innsmouth's history. Upon realizing the true nature of its residents, he and a few trusted officers of the Arkham Police Department arrived in Innsmouth in the dead of night to spirit Arnold and the ten-year-old Callista to safety. When Arkham proved to be not far enough from Innsmouth, they went to Boston.
Involvement with the Havelocks & Transformation
Callista graduated from Simmons Female College in Boston in 1922. As a fan of Jules Verne, she decided to travel around the world in eighty days. During her time in Berlin, she stayed in the inn run by the English-speaking married couple Moira O'Farell-Havelock and Farley Havelock. She met and formed a romantic relationship with Teague Martin, a former Catholic priest from Ireland, and decided to dawdle in the Wicked City
—thereby dashing her own hopes of completing her journey in a timely manner.
Callista's transformation beset her rapidly, and she needed to be rushed to the coast so that she could return to the sea before she suffocated on land. However, about six months later, she returned to Berlin… now mute (while in her human form) and with scars in the shape of gills on her neck.
Appearance
In her human form, Callista is a petite white woman with long, light brown hair that she keeps tied up in a bun, and brown eyes. She wears only a small amount of makeup and often wears high-collared shirtwaists or else scarves to hide the prominent, red gill-scars on her neck.
In her Deep One form, Callista is a 12 foot long (3.3 meters) mermaid
with a shark's tail and scaly gray skin. Her hair is very long, coarse, and silvery white in color. Her eyes are large and luminous, and her mouth is full of fangs. Her fingers are clawed and webbed. Her gills are fully functional in this form, and her voice causes a state of dreamy euphoria in all who hear it; it commands instant obedience from humans.
