A little bit of backstory.

When I "talk" in dragon form, I'm not actually speaking. My vocal chords couldn't perform speech like many of you. To communicate, we used an empathetic aura which reminds those around me of certain concepts. As a converse, we also had a sensitivity to auras which so we could sense the presence of friendly and hostile beings, as well as shapes of objects in the darkness. Auras were nice, but they only work over short distances. Over long distances, we used spiritual bonds. And with those, begins our story.
Many dragon lifetimes ago, a dragon, who I will call "Wind", and a few friends of hers, formed a small, four-dragon network of spiritual bonds with each other. This wasn't anything new; spiritual bonding, done by exchanging little parts of each soul, was a symbol of ultimate trust between dragons, and permanently linked their souls, allowing them to communicate no matter the distance. When one dragon in the group died, the others found a way to bring him back as a hatchling. This created the foundations of the collective.
Over time, more and more dragons bonded with one or more members of the collective, causing it to grow. The first four dragons in the collective had an affinity for wind, and were capable of doing wind magic. In our world, magic was a kind of "background energy level" ingrained in space itself, and dragons of different affinities, as well as different conditions of matter, attracted different forms of this energy. Dragons tended to bond with dragons similar to them, and so most of us have a high affinity for wind. Every time a dragon became deceased, early or late, they were brought back by those bonded to them. Through the network of bonds, the wills of every dragon in the collective could be felt by every other dragon. With enough souls, the mass of wills blended into a collective will which all of us could feel.
Slowly but surely, the resources in our area and fertility of dragons in the region were depleted, and it became too difficult to keep every dragon in the collective alive. Those who weren't became souls drifting in the wind. They were still able to do some wind magic, and help us with thought-requiring problems. We called them "wind spirits".
The collective's will was able to control the wind in the region. However, we don't like to say we "control" the wind, but rather, we "harmonize" with it. In a way, we are the wind.
As a collective, we tend to value exploration and discovery. Unlike a few other dragon tribes in the region, who are the most technologically advanced in their own areas, our technology is largely based on assisting exploration.
Unfortunately, every once in a while, a single dragon or very small group, for some reason, attacks the collective. Most research and development then suddenly rotates into weapons to defend ourselves. Strangely, despite weapons not being the primary focus of our research, this happens often enough that we have the leading weapons technology on our planet.
Wind is one of the dragons most integrated into the collective - she has bonded so many times that she essentially has a part of all of us in her. It's debatable whether she is still the same dragon as before, but she stands by her decisions.