Background
I'm creating an island on a medieval world with one large port city/town and roughly half a dozen smaller settlements on it. It's not too far from the mainland—several hours at most—but big enough to have a mostly self-sustaining population of its own.
Conceits of the Setting
- The island is in a temperate zone, south of the equator
- It's a fantasy setting, with magic. But it's not that widespread
- The island has been civilized for hundreds of years
- Up until recent history (less than a 5 years) it's been kept safe by a powerful empire
- The empire is a generic continent-spanning, mostly-good (but sometimes harsh) empire
- It's a generic D&D/Warhammer Fantasy setting
Reasons for Asking
I'm a role-player, and creating this island setting for running my players through a few adventures. I have no idea about population density, appropriately sized land masses, medieval-like city/town/village populations, and everything that follows from them.
Questions
- How big of an island would this theoretically be? In square miles/kilometers (I'm American, so sq mi would be easier, but I can do the conversion from sq km)
- What would the total population of the island be, and how would it be distributed? I know that a majority will be in the port city/town, but what about the outlying towns/villages?