The floating island Kingdom of Helios - First attempt at a regional map

[silverbonds]

Here's my initial sketches for the island. Couldn't figure out the scale I wanted very well or what is appropriate for a kingdom.

So from left to right is the process I went through designing my island in the sky. First couple sketches made it to be just a giant castle and surrounding city taking up the entire island. The second sketch gets me to a giant city stretching the entire east side of the island, with the "towns" and the castle/mage college (housed in one building) is the size of the towns . . . which just didn't work in my head even in magical fantasy land terms. Finally I settled with a bigger region, villages are the black, filled in circles, larger towns are squares, and cities are empty circles. The spread of my capital ( the sun in the middle of the map) is completely out of proportion for the land mass that I have and the sizes of the other cities.

After reading up on how to place rivers correctly, I'm glad I haven't started on them yet because I seem to be breaking some rules already. I want to make them as natural as possible despite magic having such a direct effect on this landscape. I'll need to work on that.