well, House of Winter is a primarily Venus based house, but you're forgetting that Venus, during the Golden Age was a bastion of research. My guess? After working on prototypes at Clovis Bray, it was sent to the Ishtar collectives, but it got there a little before the collapse, so they were never able to perfect it. Some Devil Splicers, after Winter had found this chamber, helped them perfect it and thus Winter Splicers were born. Nasty little things, they were