Synopsis
Vassago Casals, known within Sword Art Online as PoH, is the founder of Laughing Coffin, the most infamous player-killer guild of the Aincrad death game and, later, the secondary antagonist of the War of Underworld arc. Born in San Francisco to a Japanese father who provided only the minimum required support, he grew up harboring deep resentment toward East Asians after a troubled and exploitative childhood.
Ordered by a Korean crime syndicate to log into SAO and indirectly assassinate someone trapped inside, Vassago instead builds an ideology around the game's mechanics: since dying in-game already meant dying for real, he argued, killing other players was no different from any other in-game act, and no more punishable. That reasoning draws in troubled players and launches the first murders of the death game.
Cold and calculating rather than impulsive, PoH survives Aincrad's clearing and resurfaces years later working alongside Kanamoto Atsushi, continuing to pursue his own agenda well beyond the original death game.
