How Regulators work.

[TKMXIV]

I understand the basic workings of a regulator. I'm just wondering how it handles certain scenarios.

We have two people as an example.
Bob who doesn't wear a regulator and Timmy does wear one.

Scenario A:
One day Timmy dies for good. If Bob starts wearing a regulator after that, will it remove Bob's memories of Timmy, or will he still remember Timmy while only forgetting the people who died after he started wearing it?

Scenario B:
This time Bob who doesn't use a regulator dies.
Would Timmy's Regulator make him forget Bob or is the regulator only able to register the deaths of other regulator users?

To sum up my questions.
Does the Regulator scan and remove all memoires of death no matter what? Or can it only remove memories from after the time its worn?
Can it remove the memories of anyone that dies from a user or does the dead person have to also have a regulator for it to register?

[Dikatis]

In Scenario A, no, it only removes memories at the time of death. We see this with Yaana and Neyuni in the Arcadion questline. Their parents taught them not to wear regulators, but Yaana and Neyuni both remember their parents even after they started wearing regulators.

In Scenario B, also no. In the Arcadion questline, the President is said to have taken the regulators of "immortalized" fighters so that they die of psychonekrosis still remembered by all of their fans to keep up the illusion that they're simply living in luxury on the upper floors of Everkeep. Both parties must be wearing a regulator at the time of death for the memory erasure of the dead to occur.

[TKMXIV]

Thank you Dikatis. I had forgotten those details from the raids.

[Pimsan20]

Either way, it is creepy how Regulators works. It basically is the technological version on how the life style of the Voidsent from the first.

[RedLolly]

Upon a person's death, the regulator detects the person is dead and attempts to pump in a stored blank soul to auto-revive them, but if it can't because there is no spare soul or the body is too old or otherwise damaged, it sends a message to all other regulators to block the memories of the dead person registered and uploads a copy of the dead person's memories to Living Memory.

The regulator and body are then collected and processed away. The extra souls are put back into the system for anyone to purchase and use and we are to assume the body's aether is also recycled (judging by how much dust is in the Underkeep) for general power usage.

If you aren't wearing a regulator, that erasure and upload step can't happen. People both remember you and you aren't "saved to the cloud." You return to the aetherial sea like nature intended.

Upon upload to Living Memory, the copied memory data includes everything that was and was not blocked, so you recall everyone you lived with and the system attempts to reconnect you with loved ones also in Living Memory.

Furthermore, the feral soul system forcefully injects corporeal aether of monsters into people, at the cost of damaging the aether of the person using it. More use causes more damage, and from what we know so far, the Arcadion's leaders are stealing the regulators of fighters as they enter late stages of the disease so that the population doesn't forget about them.

The DT Hildibrand series also shows the OPPOSITE is possible. Monsters can have the identity of a person injected into them. They are fully cognizant and have their memories from being human but fully erase any of the memories or mind of the monster. We don't know if it can be reversed if the old human body exists, and the experiments were done exclusively underground on criminals and the few we've seen so far have a good grasp on their monster abilities as well. It's likely not a pleasant process.

Regulators actually entirely prevent souls from returning to the Aetherial Sea on top of the entire system requiring even more soul aether to function.