Quote Originally Posted by RicaRuin View Post
Wasn't Ascian Prime looking like the 'true' Form of the Ascians back in 1.0? My guess is that 3.0 still had them unsure about what to do with the Ascians, resulting in... something that doesn't fit with the direction they took later.
Not so much 'true' form, but just a wraith like form one showed up briefly as in one 1.0 main story quest, presumedly to terrify the beastmen into summoning their Primals. Lahabrea and Igeyorhm fusing together at the end of the Aetherochemical Research Facility into a similar form was probably just a callback to that, and wasn't really indicative of something much deeper (after all, we've never seen any more Ascians do the same thing since).