Astrological impossibilities of a drunken fool

[The Din]

Wizards are so overdone ...so I call them Starpullers instead and hope all you mindless readers won't notice the similarities. I came upon this name trying to think up a logical reason for my 'wizards' to pull meteors out of the sky. What I imagined is: the (magnetic) remnants of some ancient explosion are floating around in orbit, it is these that the 'Starpullers' pull down and use to smite their enemies. (Lightning just wasn't doing it for me.)

Problem is, I know next to nothing about such things. If anyone sees anything inherently wrong with this scenario, please feel free to call me an idiot or any variation of the word. Otherwise, any idea on how long it would logically take to hit the ground, and what sort of crater it would make? One poor fellow might even have one of these projectiles hit him on the noggin...

 

[Jess A]

Smaller rocks would break and burn up in our atmosphere due to friction and heat (they move so fast).

Larger ones can cause some nice damage. Grab the film 'Asteroid' (Asteroid (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Yes, given, it's a fictional movie and a lot of science in those movies is rubbish, but it's a bit of visual on various-sized meteorites and the damage they do to people's cars or the buildings.

It'd also take a hell of a lot of energy and power for the magic-user to pull something forcefully out of orbit, I'd think. But maybe they create a sort of 'portal' (invisible) which opens up near the rock in space, sucks it in, and it reappears whole in the sky, ready to do the mage's bidding? Or it appears in the sky and an inexperienced mage gets hit in the head (and definitely killed) from lack of control...

Having the portal idea might solve the issue of the time it takes (it could be almost instantaneous - but that would be left up to you, the writer) and the rocks breaking up completely. The mage could even manipulate its speed (and direction?) if experienced.

 

[Telcontar]

Neat idea!

Also, the atmospheric drag problem (which causes most meteorites to disintegrate before impact) might not be as big a problem if they are already in the orbit of the planet. The reason most DO break up is because they approach Earth at substantial pre-existing speeds. I have no idea on the actual math/physics, but it might make a difference if you assume the 'stars' they pull down are reduced to a relative speed of 0 before falling into the atmosphere.

As Cloud mentioned, though, the biggest problem really is delay.

 

[Queshire]

It's fantasy, so long as it's internally consistent it should be fine. I do suggest being careful though, that's A LOT of power you're tossing around there. Even at the lowest power it'd be like a living catapult or seige artillery while on the higher level it could cause destruction on the level of a nuclear bomb. They would not be civilians, they would have to be used just for war, which is a very different feel from a traditional wizard who could break (or cast) curses or offer good advice to the king on just about anything. I suggest giving them various neat gravity powers so they aren't just limited to calling down a star to deal with any situation, they could dramatically increase the weight of someone so they couldn't move, decrease the pull of gravity on themselves to give them puesdo-superstrength, make diamonds by using gravity to crush diamonds, and of course using gravity in their signature star calling.

Another thing to consider is that their star calling is limited by how many "stars" there are in the sky, while at the time there might be enough of them to not worry about it, eventually they'd run out.