While I am aware that this is a late submission after the window has closed, I had spent a lot of time thinking on this subject and honestly, I care more about the ideas' possible inclusion more than I do about money.
1) The Fae Gardens
One thing which is common among the many tales of the Fae is that of vast gardens. They would have an abundance of beautiful flowers, topiary, ponds, hedge mazes, gazebos (not for fighting, though a gazebo monster would be a great easter egg for those in the know), lawns, grottos, and follies. These things are already somewhat represented in the game in various areas in the forest, but they are sparsely populated. Going along with this idea would be a Wonderland style variant of the Red Queen's Rose Garden with checkerboard paths and playing card soldiers (as wonderland is in the public domain, and relevant to the timeline of the game, wonderland could easily be its' own biome style). Keeping with this theme you could have giant chess boards with the clockwork chessmen populating it, perhaps even playing out their own elaborate games against one another or even having "towns" with them just going about their days emulating the biological folk.
2) The Artistic Realms
Another idea I had was that of realms which trend more toward the surreal aspects of the human psyche. The further we explore away from the realms with physics similar to Earth the more bizarre things should become, one such place could be a variant on the existing biomes which I think of as "Artistic Realms" which would render the world in various artistic media. Imagine a realm made of Oil Paint (a la What Dreams May Come) or a realms where Pastels or Charcoal are what the land is composed of. Interestingly, you could even use the resources here to be a source of some refined materials, such as the rocks and plants turning into paint instead of stone or fiber, trees turning in to charcoal instead of wood, or even rendering the world as fabric swatches with the resources being harvested as cloth, fabric, and leather.
3) Land Reefs
Currently swimming is a very deadly thing for the realmwalker, so Atlantis style realms, while a wonderful idea (consider that it's own suggestion if you want, but that's outside the scope of this idea and is basically self-explanatory) are impractical without a reworking of that system. However, I think a coral reef like biome on land would be wonderful. It would have various coral formations, winding caves created by the interaction of various coral masses intersecting, birds and other flying creatures creating "schools" living in and around the air-reefs would dominate. There could be various predators lurking in wait much like Moray Eels, Urchin's and other dynamic but sedentary fauna replacing traditional flora throughout. You could even have vast sections of Bioluminescence. This would be a living stone jungle with land variants of traditional oceanic creatures, giant clams, land sharks, etc. It would be familiar, yet surreal seeing these things outside their traditional contexts. Some inspirations may be found in Brandon Sanderson's "Stormlight Archive" world of Roshar as that has a very aquatic feel, though on land.
4) The Horological Realms
One thing which is being underplayed in this game is clockwork. While you have the various Clockwork chessmen, there are a great deal of other mechanical marvels which could be demonstrated. A realm where the reminders of time are ever-present would be quite interesting. Taking inspiration from Dali's Persistence of Memory, a realm with clocks worked into ever tree, hanging over them, birds make of clocks with wings (time does fly after all ;D), crocodiles (a la Peter Pan), and other creatures inspired by the idea of time's passage could be fun. It would also be interesting to have the flow of time in these places be somewhat random, and perhaps even reverse itself at times, with the native creatures moving backwards and the sun reversing direction in the sky, you could even have a master clock at the heart of the realm, much like the Fae Towers are in the current ones, which would let the player manipulate the flow of time, including the ability to freeze or reverse it (From a game mechanics standpoint it would have little to no effect, but being able to set the specific time of day would be an interesting idea, especially for photographers). Perhaps time could jump randomly until the bound are expelled from the master clock representing the curing of some sort of infection?
There are other ideas I have, but these are the best of them and I think 4 late submissions is good enough for now, if you run something similar again, perhaps I'll submit them then. I have 1 or 2 which are good, but I don't see how they could be implemented within the current narrative framework of the game.
