Games.  Meant as entertaining diversions for the masses, in today's world they come in a number of different stripes.  There are the physical games of old - board and card games, ones based on dice, the usual accoutrements of the casinos of Las Vegas, and more.  But there are also the<em>new</em>games of today: video games, played on screens across the world.<br/><br/>And one of the<em>most</em>successful games of the new breed of today had been those of The Marvelous World of Ghostfield.  Originally a set of regular games, Ghostfield as a franchise had been so wildly successful that its creators - Take Three Studios - had decided to take a step in a new direction: an MMO.  Massive Multiplayer Online games were not always successful, even ones based on familiar franchises.  For every World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, there's a Matrix Online, Elder Scrolls Online, or even...<em>Doctor Who</em>?  (Yes.  Really.)<br/><br/>But the Ghostfield MMO<em>had</em>been a resounding success, even through it's first two expansions -<em>Scar-Born</em>and<em>Embers of Enendia</em>- leading to the announcement of its third expansion,<em>Beyond the North.</em>Increasing the size of the map and doing a handful of other long-sought changes to the game.  Take Three had even held a contest to award several of its players special status to try out the new expansion before it was rolled out to the public...<br/><br/>...which is where our story begins.<br/><br/>Sort of.<br/><br/>====================================================================================================================================================<br/><span class="bbc_u"><br/>Hour 356 of Survival</span><br/><br/>"The desert sucks..."  Lucas Myers, game character Isabelle, groaned as he...ish, sat under the shade of a tent in one of the Beast Kingdoms of the southern continent of Ghostfield.  "...but at least I'm not going to be easily taken by surprise."  He, along with ninety-nine other lucky winners, had been chosen as those to final play-test the<em>Beyond the North</em>expansion for Marvelous World of Ghostfield.  Though if you asked ninety of those winners, luck was not something that they would say had anything to do with their situation, and that included Lucas.<br/><br/>For one thing, he'd been effectively turned into his character, a shapely Beast Kingdoms girl he'd modeled on Isabelle of Animal Crossing.