The computer revolution (particularly the Internet)
has not been a completely positive development from the point of view of
Heaven. On the one hand, it allows all
sorts of people to come together in new and interesting ways and accomplish
things that they never could by themselves; on the other hand, well, it allows
all sorts of people to come together in new and interesting ways and accomplish
things that they never could by themselves.
Free will can be maddening at times, especially when you have only an
empirical understanding of it. This
might partially explain why the relevant section of the Host immediately
targeted Pentecostco.com from Day One, and will continue to target it until
somebody gets the hint; it may not be all that important, but it's something
that they can actually strike at, by God.
It should be understood that there are perfectly
good tactical reasons to go after this site.
It's fairly clearly a Sorcerous creation: the website makes it quite
clear that it exists to provide uniform-quality occult and esoteric raw
materials at low cost and high volume.
Note 'raw materials': Pentecostco.com does not offer Hands of Glory,
'magic wands', 'love potions' or even occult textbooks. But if you're looking for a bag of wheat
gathered at dawn with a silver sickle, or the tears of a clown, or five pounds
of rowan wood that have soaked up moonlight for an entire lunar year, they keep
it in stock. They keep in stock all
the (legal) stuff that would be normally at least moderately time-consuming or
mildly inconvenient for an occultist to make on his or her own. And they offer bulk discounts.
This would be only of mild interest if it weren't
for the fact that mixed in with all the materials for rituals that don't work
are the most common materials for rituals that do. In the past, tracking a Sorcerer via his
purchases was a common activity; if you knew that a particular Summon Ethereal
ritual required, say, the first combs of honey from the hives of a mayor, you
could keep an eye on the appropriate locales.
But should that ingredient also become vital for a luck potion that
doesn't actually do anything (but is popular anyway), that's a whole new
problem. In other words,
Pentecostco.com has significantly decayed the signal-to-noise ratio in an area
where the Host has been used to hearing relatively clear tones.
Handling this is a bit of a problem. As was mentioned earlier, Pentecostco.com
does not sell anything that could be seen as an inherently occult item; it
merely sells raw materials, all of which are perfectly legal to own. Also, the owners of the company (brother and
sister) are not demons, Hellsworn, aware of the War or even bad people - Hell
went to some trouble to find two ethical neo-pagans with sufficient business sense
that they could be counted on to maintain a business that was essentially
constructed for them behind the scenes.
In certain campaigns, this may not matter when it comes time for the
knives to come out - but any universe where Heaven is prepared to blow up
inconvenient business owners is probably going to be one where Hell is prepared
to quite selfishly act to stop that.
Lastly, of course, is the minor detail that Heaven's resources are not
infinite: Sorcery is annoying, yes, but usually not as much as the creation of
new Infernal Tethers or active Diabolical incursions are. If it gets too troublesome, it will be dealt
with. Until then... well. One does what one can.
It is thus contemplated that the general style of the conflict over Pentecostco.com be indirect; those elements of Heaven and Hell who are assigned to deal with it engage in proxy sniping, computer hacking, credit card fraud - spoilers and DOS attacks are much more likely than armed assaults. Marc's people are also currently engaged in a lawsuit for copyright violation (the name, you see), which is not likely to have much of an effect in the long run but is still good practice.