I don't have a helluva lot to add, but your observations about elemental magic did pique my interest. One of the concepts that I've been bandying around which I think shares a wavelength with yours is that magic shouldn't come from nowhere. It is a reaction to an action. It's energy, of a sort. I view it as a 'draw' and a 'cast' process.

Further, I've been thinking about substituting the predictability of 'elements' and the traits that inevitably attach themselves to these with different schools based upon the source of the drawn energy: Kinetic, Arcane (which would be mainly radiative energy), Chemical, Dark (Atomic), Magnetic, and Blood (metabolic energy and sacrificial). Those are my thoughts, and they may evolve into an RPG of my own someday, but I thought that I'd put them out there since we seem to be of like mind or at least in the same neighbourhood with regards to magic use and making it a bit less... hackneyed.

In terms of setting, what I'd love to see is something truly unique (which, I acknowledge, may be difficult given that basically everything that we think stems from existing frameworks of reference). Ideas so often carry the tone and flavour of actual historical regions, cultures, and time periods. How about a culture obsessed with making everything circular? One that's powerfully Gnostic, wants to destroy its sky deity, and builds interconnected lattices of spires with ribbed stonework everywhere? Maybe another that is normally almost eerily harmonious, but purposely culls its best and brightest in mass orgies of slaughter at unpredictable intervals (and not based on some goofy Mayan-type calendar) in order to preserve a level of mediocrity that prevents a class of privileged elites from taking root and keeps most people from feeling inferior? I'm pretty much just spitballing, but you seem to have, at once, the creativity, capability, and desire to do something totally original, so I figured I'd lob a few your way!