Heh, I felt guilty going after your guy.
I agree, the Eberron take on the "Home" archetype is a good one, and deep, where the figure extends to personify the concept of the wider "community", the home of a community. This is kinda cool. In the sense of the wider community, the woman also becomes active outside the house.
Still, the origin of the archetype is what it is, woman in kitchen. I had to choose one to downvote. It is also the least Norse, where the hearth is masculine, relating to the fire jotnar Logi (sometimes confusing with Loki).
That said, the Sovereign Host "Home" and her husband "Magic", might have a Frigg and O'ðinn vibe.
I am starting to find the heteronormativity of the archetypes annoying. To be fair, if "Magic" relates with O'ðinn, his partly feminine characteristics subvert it slightly. Note, Freyja is the personification of seiðr magic, while O'ðinn is more specifically the personification of the altered state of mind while doing it.
In the Norse worldview, these personifications arent "gods" (in the English meaning of the term), but rather are the things in themselves. When people do magic, this magic is a living being, with a mind of its own. The magic behaves the way it does because these are the kinds of things that "Magic" likes and chooses to do. An object literally has a personality. When physical phenomena have their own consciousnesses, is animism.
But Eberron actually has this things-in-themselves quality, explicity. For example, the grain harvest has a mind of its own, and this animistic being as a personality is "Fertility". A forge has its own mind, the "Forge". The Sovereign Host does seem to elevate these animistic beings as masters with servants, whence polytheism, but the animistic nature of the Host keeps the earlier animism going on. Which is cool! Actually, if an Eberron sacred tradition views these personifications of the Sovereign Host horizontally as "friends" and neighbors, rather than vertically as lords and masters, I suspect the Eberron Sovereign Host can work as a nonpolytheistic and strictly animistic worldview.
Relatedly.
It annoys me that Eberron has "Fertility", who extends to the concept of sexuality, be only feminine. This carries a slight connotation of sexual descrimination that objectifies only women. In Norse tradition, Freyr and Freyja are counterparts of both masculine and feminine sexualities. There might even be archeological evidence of homosexuality between the pair, perhaps via shapeshifting. This also conveys a transgender aspect of sexual beings.
In any case, I want Eberron archetypes to be more explicitly inclusive. Ideally for me, Eberron traditions repesent four genders: masculine, feminine, both, and neither. Any gender can be in a relationship with any gender, including the same gender.
Re the genders of archetypes. The Norse perceive the sun as feminine and the moon as masculine, unlike the Greeks and Romans. In the Sovereign Host too, the "Sun" is feminine. That makes me wonder if her brother the "Soldier" is actually a personification of the moon, with a masculine spin. Thus the phases of the moon are a soldier dutifully donning armor for each mission and removing it afterward. The masculinity of the moon feels Norse. However, the Norse have clan warriors, but not really "soldiers" in the way that empires do.
In sum, I like how the Sovereign Host has an animistic sensibility. Also, Norse traditions seem to inspire some of this Eberron tradition, while the traditions of other ethnicities do too. The gendering of the traditions are concern, especially if vaguely stereotypical or noninclusive. Here in the Survivor thread, the archetypes of the Sovereign Host list separately, despite comprising a single sacred tradition. So, the itemization forces me to think about which archetypes I like best.
