Revelations from Patch 3.56

[Lambdafish]

But to answer the question: Draconic aether, and a direct invocation of a draconic primal by the summoner when dictating form. I thought the game was pretty clear on the matter. Honestly, I thought it was a neat new angle of Primal summoning lore, a look at what happens when desperate, erratic dying prayers are harnessed, rather than specific focused ones. I guess it's something you either buy or you don't.

I don't buy it because it goes against what we know about primals thus far. If "draconic aether" is the reason that it is a dragon, then why wasn't Thordan even remotely dragon-like? Why didn't we become dragon-esque when we used Hraesvelgrs eye? The reason is that there is no such thing as "draconic aether" in a real sense, and that aether is aether and draconic aether is just a massively concentrated amount of generic unaspected aether stored within an eye.

As for the summoner dictating form, that doesn't work either, the form comes about in an image dictated by the worshippers, and is not dictated by one person. If everyone was praying for Rhalgar (which is highly likely as their big god deity) and then Ilberd went "I want a dragon", the primal should still come out as Rhalgar, either that or a tiny pitiful dribble of aether dragon fueled by only Ilberds fury, we wouldn't have Shinryu vs Omega, we would have Omega snuffing out a Shinryu-egi.

I am with Kallera on this, I don't get it. The only explanation I have is that Shinryu = Rhalgar. which also doesn't make sense because we see a statue of him in Rhalgars Reach, though Shinryu does seem to have lightning attacks.