>What are the characteristics that distinguish spirits from daimones? If
>you encountered an unknown otherworldly entity on your tula, how would
>you find out which one it was? (If your answer is "go to your local
>tribal magician and ask him", how would he or she determine that?)
From a somewhat God-Learned PoV:
The division between the mortal world and the god plane is individuality. One can distinguish between one person and the next in the mortal world with ease. But this is not the case on the God Plane for one cannot distinguish between one ancestor and the next - they all look alike and their only defining characteristic is that of their clan.
The division between the mortal world and the spirit world is one of bodies. One has bodies in this world but the spirits on the spirit planes have no bodies. They have individuality but lack fixed forms. Giants and Great Spirits have defined bodies but these are different entities than spirits.
The division between the sorcery plane is one of matter but this is largely beyond ordinary Heortling experience.
So your average Heortling looking at a spirit will notice that it is "vaguely shaped or formless" (HW:HB p27). He might be able to make out that it is a spirit of a tree, animal or person. The Heortling will not be able to determine easily the type of spirit that he sees (for example, he could guess that he is encountering a disease spirit but not know the type of disease) because a given class of spirits varies greater in form than a given class of daimones.
Conversely the Spirit-talker will recognize any type of spirit that he sees. They will be unable to easily identify any daimone for they lack any significant features for the Spirit-talker to pick up on.
I should stress that these patterns are only what the Heortlings see. They won't know (or comprehend) the God-Learner reasoning for it and would have a different idea of how the differences arise. They would reason that the Sorcery Planes look so featureless because the sorcerers tap it rather than the probable God-Learned explanation that their magical senses are unsuitable for perceiving the energies that pervades the Sorcery planes.
Which leads to a question that hasn't been answered so far. How do the Heortlings account for the difference between the world of the Gods (or just the Storm Tribe) and the world of spirits? What do they make of the difference between the Storm Realm and the Praxian Otherworld?
The only answer that I can think of is that the Heortlings see the spirit world as the realm of the forces of Disorder. Umath's earlier manifestations were spirits because they were manifestations of Umath's wild, turbulent and disruptive nature. Umath's later manifestations are gods for they represent the transformation of Umath's personality and purpose from inherent disorder into a force for cosmic justice.
--Peter Metcalfe
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