A thread of loose ends

[Metastachydium]

What's inside Xykon's Astral fortress and how it will be used.

I'm with Doug on this. Nothing (well, not nothing as such; it has a pretty pendant and a lot of useless traps that guard it, but you get the idea) and in no particular way.

The prize for winning the bet between Thor and Hel (this is kind of a minor one, but Hel hints at it in #1083).

Hey, I completely forgot about that half-sentence and now I need to know. Thanks for the reminder!

The dramatic return of TriGak.

…or, at least, his girlfriend. Let's not forget about the girlfriend.

Things I don't think belong:
Elan's secret plan works best if it is forever a secret and handled off page.

Yep.

If the escaped vampire (singular as far as I know) is never seen again, I will not feel that Rich somehow neglected to deal with this.

And yep again. Curly is only an asset insofar as Hel can leverage her existence into manipulating the outcome of the vote, which, frankly, she's rather unlikely to pull, to put it mildly.

The major cliffhanger in the desert. Snarl busting through the rift and what happened to Laurin.

That's not much of a cliffhanger. She lived; or she died. Whichever you like more. I see little reason to think that anything will come of it; that was just to demonstrate the Snarl is real and dangerous. If anything, I see it as tying up a loose end.