Yarxys Fundamental Laws

Excerpt from page 17:

The First Law (the law of energy): Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transformed.
The Second Law (the law of entropy): The disorder, or "entropy" of an isolated system never decreases.
The Third Law (the law of heat): All objects contain energy unless they are at a theoretical state of "absolute zero" which is equivalent to an absence of energy.

The First Law has the greatest implications for understanding the world. In only nine words (two being redundant) it implies that matter and energy are merely transformed forms of one other, two sides of the same coin rather than being unreconcilable. How else are we to explain the conversion of energy to matter, as in the case of conjuration, or the conversion of matter to energy, as in the case of a burning log? The arcane energy harnessed by the wizard did not "create" an object, it merely transformed the aracane enegy within them into something solid. The log does not "disappear" when burned, it merely becomes heat and smoke. Once you learn to see these two are inseparable, your view of the world rapidly changes.

The obvious question that then arises is, if a spellcaster uses arcane energy to conjure objects, where then does that energy come from? Surely not their own body; while experiments have determined that there is a physically-draining effect of the casting of spells, it is minor enough not to be on the order of the kind of energetic expenditure that could be transformed into whole fortresses. The only explanation, then, is that we are not dealing with an isolated system: there is an external source, feeding energyto the caster. That source is what we call The Weave.
The Second Law addresses what at first might seem to be an argument against the First Law, namely that energy can be "spent". A wizard "uses" a presumably great deal of energy when they create a fireball, but that energy doesn't stay for very long - it dissipates in the explosion. There was great energy, and now it has been lost - doesn't this violate the First Law? In fact, what has happened is that the energy of the fireball has been expended into heat which has diffused throughout the surrounding area and has led to chemical transformations such as the combustion of materials that require energy themselves. The energy has not been destroyed, but we are inclined to say so because it has become less useful. The wizard cannot then simply recreate the fireball by sucking the heat from the air and reversing the reactions they caused. What has happened is that the energy has gone from a state in which it was highly ordered and useful and had much potential for use (namely, throwing a fireball in someone's face) to a state in which it is highly chaotic and unuseful and has very little potential for use.
Entropy represents the amount of order or potential in a system - disorderly energy that isn't as useful can be said to have high entropy, while ordered energy that has more uses can be said to have low entropy. Take the example of a waterwheel positioned in a waterfall, built to turn as the water descends. The water at the top of the cliff, above the waterwheel, has great potential for us to use it. The water that has already fallen, on the other hand, is useless to us despite the fact that there is exactly as much matter/energy as there was at the top of the cliff. 

Type

Journal, Scientific