The Bureau of Extremely Foreign Affairs

M&M

In my games, we sometimes deal with the Bureau of Extremely Foreign Affairs, which started as the Canadian department for dealing with extraterrestrial civilizations. There is a bureaucratic arm and an investigative arm.

For this week's adventure, I have modified the BEFA for superheroes. They are a subdivision of the department of Foreign Affairs, and they deal with extra-normal political entities.

While high technology and super-science might not fall into their remit, magic almost always does. Trade something with fairyland? They deal with the excise taxes. Granted a boon by a Lovecraftian cosmic horror? They put a dollar value on it or determine if it's dangerous to the public safety. They also deal with the local equivalents of Atlantis or Themyscira. Heck, they might be responsible for extradimensional refugees, or be the department that calls your heroes when Galactus arrives. ("He has refused normal methods of communication and I am sure we don't want a repeat of the Thanos issue. The deaths and rebirths alone cause an incredible number of headaches.")

In the Dr. Why adventure, they can occasionally borrow from the Department of Defense a magic-sniffer (who is not without her own problems) to find, say, a previously-shielded magic power source of unknown provenance, which might indicate illegal trade, smuggling, or the existence of a previously-unrealized pantheon.

And just having thought about them this much makes me want to do a short BEFA adventure.