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It's specifically said by...Maithanet, I think? That the Gods are blind to the No-God because they cannot conceive of an intellect without a soul. Ergo, any interaction it has with every other possibility in the time line is invisible to them.

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Do the Inchi and the non-men have souls? I'd imagine that in order to be damned you would need a soul. So can the gods see the Inchi but nothing of the Tekne (unless a soul appears in it by accident).

The Inchoroi and Nonmen certainly have souls. That's their whole motive. Saving them. I don't think the Gods are blinded to the tekne any more than they're blinded by any other tool. But if you can't see the motives or actions of the user because it has no soul, then you run into an issue.

There has been some stipulation that the No-God is kind of a soul trapping device. I guess this fact would seem to throw out that theory since if the No-God was some kind of collection of souls then the gods would be able to see him. Right?

Not necessarily, because I think once the No-God manifests the Gods are completely blinded to everything. The Outside becomes closed. Thus the "any soul that meets him goes no further" deal with those who die in his presence, and the years of the womb. Presumably every child was stillborn because no souls could manifest to inhabit the fetus.

What about the Synthese? Actually a question before that, any ideas on how the synthase operates? I thought it was some kind of proxy body, or was there a quote that said something about cramming an intellect so vast into such a small skull (I cant remember the quote exactly, I believe its in TDTCB. It may have said soul/body instead of intellect/skull).

There are a few statements along those lines. Aurang seems quite diminished in intellect and power while bound to the Synthese. It seems to be some kind of soul binding deal. Whether this is Aurang's soul somehow remote operating the body or if it's actually stuck in there entirely and Aurang's body is temporarily soulless, I don't know. If it's the latter, I wonder what would happen should the Synthese be destroyed?

What about the dragons, and the other weapon races. Can the gods not see any of that?

No, because none of the weapon races (with the exception of that accident with the Skin Spy) have souls. Well, Wutteat does but he wasn't made by the Inchoroi. Just the basis for one of their productions.

Random thoughts:
Could the Absolute, once attained, render one invisible to the gods as well? Perhaps once a soul if 'free', it renders them invisible. Or maybe in the least, able to operate in certain ways that the gods do not see. Who knows.

By the Dunyain definition of the Absolute, I suppose it would. Since the person in question would come before the Gods, being the source even for their motives.

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To me it all makes the Gods seem largely irreverent, and therefore their tools equally pointless. The whole WLW thing, though an interesting concept, becomes almost silly with all the invisible enemies running around that it can't see.

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I've said many times that I can imagine a world where the White-Luck Warrior and the God's visions and prophecies are events that happen exactly as they see them, they just don't perceive the affections of the soulless, even though they perceive a unified result, which includes the consequences of those actions. It's exactly in line with Bakker's suggestion that the conscious of any entity is unconscious of its unconscious parts, doesn't question its unified perception, etc.

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Sure but isn't an imperfect understanding disastrous at some point? If the gods concept of cause and effect is more or less what the Dunyain believe, then there is a problem. For example its like all the dunyain that don't know of TTT because they dont possess all the variables to grasp it. They could look and look into the end of time, or the beginning of it i guess, and they would never see the end of their own world. Shouldn't the Gods be hit by a similar conclusion. Sure they can see everything that happens, but in a time and a place the the Consult and their machinations dont exist.

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By the Dunyain definition of the Absolute, I suppose it would. Since the person in question would come before the Gods, being the source even for their motives.

ahem.  Right now AK is the source of the motives of Yatwer etc.

I've said many times that I can imagine a world where the White-Luck Warrior and the God's visions and prophecies are events that happen exactly as they see them, they just don't perceive the affections of the soulless, even though they perceive a unified result, which includes the consequences of those actions. It's exactly in line with Bakker's suggestion that the conscious of any entity is unconscious of its unconscious parts, doesn't question its unified perception, etc.

If we add to this that the AK children have two souls, which one do the gods see?  And does Kelmomas, if his two souls are more or less conscious (but one is hidden) have an enormous advantage as a weapon against the gods?  Maybe the WLW can see Kelmo, but they can't see Kelmo when Sammy is running Kelmo's body?

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I definitely think that two soul thing is a metaphor for expressing Dunyain genetics in the fiction, excepting Kelmomas and Sammi, which I think is an undecided issue.

Also, I think you're both [EDIT: Maybe just, Wilshire] missing my meaning. I'm suggesting that everything actually happens as the Gods and the White-Luck Warrior perceive that it does and that the events they witness include the consequences of the actions of the soulless. The Gods simply rationalize their experience of events to make sense, despite not including key factors.

For instance, the Gods perceive that a man will die, at a certain point, in a war. This man actually gets hit by an arrow shot by a Skin-Spy. The Gods simply don't perceive this action yet perceive the consequence and... rationalize their own functional narrative so it makes sense without including the Skin-Spy?

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Nah I understand what you are saying completely. I just dont buy into it. Like the issue with the dunyain not perceiving  everything, eventually things dont add up. To me, they cant simultaneously 'predict' everything while not seeing a major portion of the events.

Seeing outcomes only gets you so far. Maybe a case of alternate timelines or alternate realities that the gods dont fully see and understand. Its stated somewhere, TTT maybe, that the gods see all of time at once. But who is to say 'all' means everything? They can see the cause and effect chain as it should be, with some finite margin of error. But what was 'supposed' to happen was effected by something major (good old Mog) then events would diverge. Maybe this divergence simply cannot be factored into what the gods see, considering the nature of how they perceive time.

Guess thats just a round about way of me saying that the gods being fallible, even just a little, makes them very far from omnipotent, and that they become just as likely to fail as anything else. Maybe thats flawed logic though.

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Thought that occured to me this weekend.

What happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object?

We know that the Ark is immovable. 

We know that no sorcery or work of man is unstoppable, even Kellhus has been stopped by other men, he is persistent but not unstoppable.

But the White Luck Warrior is beyond the works of man, and is an unstoppable force.

Perhaps Kellhus has planned on forcing the White Luck Warrior into acting against him, in order to draw the White Luck to the Ark.  Force the Gods to encounter what they cannot see and do not encounter.  Perhaps he wants to see what happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object.

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watched batman recently?

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as far as i know there has been no specific individual named as th "white luck warrior" ?
i thought perhaps it was sorweel, and the visions seem inconclusive at least.
any help?
i really don't think it's the narindar that kills maithanet, he has no character development...

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It seems probable scenarios are cultivated by Yatwer till one is the one that has the WLW kill AK. In such a case perhaps Sorweel is needed to forfil the scenario?

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Welcome, shadowjack. I've had speculations alone the same lines as yourself, that the White-Luck Warrior is more a sort of vested spirit or as ensouling multiple peoples simultaneously as he expresses his agency from the Outside into the World.

However, Bakker's style of writing is marked by some consistencies that would suggest that the Narindar who killed Maithanet is indeed the White-Luck Warrior. I expect that in the next books the White-Luck Warrior's perspective and existence are going to be much more thoroughly explored...

Along with Meppa's.

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or it's all made-up religious hokey?

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burn the heretic!