Had a lore question while running Edge of Darkness….

The Acolytes have killed some body snatchers while staking out Lily Arbest's place.
They wanted to report in to the Inquisition to notify them of their discovery, but the trains are in Lockdown by the enforcers since they didn't report in.
Their next idea they had was seeing if they could contact them by way of land-line voice comm…

Do Hive worlds have any sort of telephone/line communication system? I sort of played it off as the Corscarla division is cut off from communications due to its run down state, but was just curious if the technology is available and common in 40k (perhaps mid/upper hive where tech is actually maintained by priests, etc….)

I assume that all 'active' areas of a hive have regularly placed antenae that allow unlimited vox communicatons; 'inactive' locations- such as the Underhive- have no such amenities and thus vox communication is severely hindered. Since typical hab-prols can't afford microbeads, yet they are expected to report suspiscious behavior they see, it makes sense that there would be some kind of public vox units, again in 'active' areas. Wether or not you consider the Coscarla Subdivision to be 'active' is up to you; I would go with whatever works best for the story at the time…

I go with the Scenario notes on this one, they state that the Vox-Line in the Armoured bunker-house of the Magistrates is the only working line, and all others have been severed.

Personally I have a vox-link available in a lot of public locations, usually for 'pay to use'. If the Acolytes were going to bring one of their own they would have to plug into the local feed network (as the antennae might have trouble penetrating the hive / being able to radio out of the division would loosen the bolts on the scenario story) and find that the local network is severed, but the antennae picks up wierd communications within the division…

There was some really interesting stuff done by Reason on communication within hives. Stuff about clatter towers, Missive Guilds (letter carriers…sort of), and other such. Check this site http://www.principiainfecta.com/ and scroll down to Sibellus Noir, Part VIII.