Why did the universe pick a white guy who isn't even a historian for this. "Uh, lots of violent deaths when people resist getting colonized, people governing people from a very different culture and doing it badly because they don't understand the people they're supposed to be helping, knowledge being lost when everyone who knows is killed or prevented from passing it on to their children, widespread unemployment and despair, the destruction of important social institutions such that places collapse into anarchy the minute the colonizers stop being able to hold them together. Plus stuff like theft of natural resources and people straight up enslaving each other which colonizers could theoretically choose to refrain from but on practice there's always someone who tries it. Also being violently subjugated tends to make you hate the people doing it, so colonized people end up rejecting even really good innovations they would have happily adopted if they'd had a choice from the start."

"Hm. Has anyone tried something else? Educational programs? Vaccination campaigns? I don't know, sending priests?" 

"Educational programs work if the people have enough food and time and so on and think the things being taught are useful. Vaccination campaigns are great but they work a lot better if the country doing them has a reputation for trustworthiness; lots of people don't want a stranger sticking a needle in them unless they're sure it's legit. Most of the examples involving priests that I can remember ended in a bunch of murder but maybe if you get some very non-murderous priests. Though even then there's a risk the priests get murdered by someone else."

"Why would someone murder a priest? Are they Jews?"

Wow what the fuck, not gonna poke that can of worms right this minute. "Obviously people shouldn't murder priests unless I guess if the priests murdered someone else first, but sometimes priests will try to make it illegal for other people to practice their own religions, or convert a bunch of people who then start causing trouble for the people who didn't convert, or something. Also I'm not clear what you're envisioning the priests being for; is the idea to persuade people to practice your religion and if so what do you hope to gain from that?"

"Well, they're more likely to get the blessings of the gods if they worship the gods in the way they like best."

"Hush."

Bruce's face goes through several seconds of internal struggle, including literally biting his tongue at one point, and then he says, "I am so extremely tempted to suggest that I run a scientific study of that."

"You can't do a scientific study of the gods."

"Because they don't exist!"

"Well, something punted me between universes, but it didn't exactly leave a business card, so I don't even know if it was a person let alone any specific one."

"...that's true but it seems very unlikely that whatever-it-is once turned into a golden shower and impregnated a submissive."

"If any entities actually want the facts about themselves to be common knowledge, they can always show up and tell me. Or someone else. Or make the clouds spell out words. Or anything else that isn't sneaking around and hiding."

"I guess what we can learn from the strange entities is that they want you to gain the benefits of Anglian civilization." (He's joking.) "We should really figure out more about how to get people to cross worlds."

"We really should! There are so many inventions to trade!" And he wants a hot shower and the food he's used to and not to have his inadequate knowledge of history be all this world has to learn from and not to be abducted by terrifying doms.

"I wonder what would happen if James and those other people did the exact same thing again. There was some weird stuff on my end before I showed up, too, but I don't know how to replicate that from here."

"We could always get them to try again."

"Probably the worst that will happen is nothing. Well, nothing and then being annoyed about having their time wasted, but unless anyone knows anything else about this sort of thing it's the best lead I've got."

"So you two can work on that and I will work on persuading my fellow assembly members that we should take more steps about slavery and not attempt to conquer all of Gallia's colonies."

"That seems good. And I'll work on inventing more vaccines and electricity and publish some stuff on statistics, in case it doesn't work." 

They go to see James!

James sulks about revealing the secret rituals of the cult of Bacchus. 

"You mean your excuse for getting drunk with other doms."

"Is there also another reason they're secret? If the gods are in fact hiding that's the sort of thing it would be good to know." He doesn't super want to get struck by lightning for prying into things man was not meant to know or whatever, but nobody else has been that he knows about, and he's not going to stop prying into things without a good reason.

"People like mystery religions."

"That's fair; knowing secrets nobody else does is neat. Can you do the ritual again anyway? Being able to go back and forth between worlds would be really important."