Tony Stark

* Iron Man
* Tony Stark

**Secondary:**
Stark Eco-Compound
112 Chattahoochee Hills
Fairburn, GA

## Background

### 1963 - 1984: Tony Stark

Anthony Edward Stark was born on May 27, 1963 in Manhattan, New York City, to Howard & Maria Stark. He became good friends with Edwin Jarvis, the butler of Stark's family, who watched over Tony throughout all of his childhood. His early life was often dominated by the absence of his father. While loved unconditionally by Maria, Tony suffered from a strained relationship with his father, both due to the contrast of Tony's sensitive & reclusive nature with the cold & calculating Howard. Howard constantly talked about his admiration for Captain America, which caused Tony to develop hatred & resentment towards the super soldier.

This caused Tony to turn to electronics as a coping mechanism at a young age, as he started to believe hardware to be comprehensible & reliable, whereas people were unpredictable & hard to understand. Tony's world couldn't find order but the things he built did. He was eventually admitted early into Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met James Rhodes & they became lifelong best friends. At seventeen, he graduated *summa cum laude* from MIT. Tony continued to excel in school, adding many doctorates to his accomplishments.

On December 16, 1984, his parents prepared to go away for a few days over the Christmas holiday & leave him home alone. On their way out, Tony got in a bad argument with his father, who remained skeptical about how he would be while they were gone. On their way to the airport, the couple would be killed in a car crash, leaving Stark in grief & struggling to process this tragedy.

The day after their deaths, Obadiah Stane became interim CEO of Stark Industries until Tony took over the next year. Upon taking the role, he became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company in history at the age of 21. To keep busy, he created an A.I. system that helped out in the house. He named the system "Just a Rather Very Intelligent System," shortened J.A.R.V.I.S., in tribute to Edwin Jarvis, whom had passed away recently.

### 1984 - 1996: Tony Stark

Stark made most of fortune off of military contracts. As his friend James Rhodes joined the United States Air Force, he became the liaison between Stark Industries & the United States Armed Forces. Under Stark's leadership, the company quickly thrived & became one of the most advanced companies in the world. His newest weapon, the Jericho missile, later took him to Afghanistan for a demonstration. After leaving the presentation, Stark's convoy was attacked by insurgents. While all the soldiers were gunned down, one of Stark Industries' bombs landed next to him. The explosion embedded several pieces of shrapnel into his chest, with several fragments dangerously close to his heart.

When Tony came to consciousness, he found himself captured alongside another captive, Ho Yinsen. The man saved Tony's life by attaching an electromagnet to his chest to prevent the shrapnel from reaching his heart. The two are ordered to build another Jericho missile & they'll be let go. Knowing that their captors would never keep up their end of the deal, Stark & Yinsen instead made a plan to escape. Because Tony was in no condition to fight, the two built a miniature Arc Reactor & battle suit.

After two months, the duo finally finished but Yinsen realized there was not enough time for them to get out & sacrificed his life to hold off their captors. Angered by Yinsen's death, Stark killed several terrorists & their Stark Industries produced weapons. His suit received damage from the various bullets, forcing him to escape with a jetpack. His flight ended up on the radar of the US Department of Defense, who sent James Rhodes to pick up Stark & bring him home.

During the press meeting following his arrival, Stark declared that his company would now no longer manufacture military weapons for the foreseeable future. As the companies' stock market plummeted, Stane advised him to reconsider the decision but Stark refused. For the following months, Tony continued building & tweaking a suit of armor based on the one him & Yinsen built. He soon learned his weapons were being used by terrorists. Upon confronting Stane, he reveals that he has filed an injunction against him. Shortly after, Tony's long time assistant Pepper Potts reveals that Stane was collaborating with the Ten Rings, the mercenaries that captured him.

Tony again confronts Stane, who confessed that he had arranged Stark's kidnapping while he ripped out the Arc Reactor from Stark's chest, causing him to go into cardiac arrest. Luckily, he is saved by Rhodes minutes before his death. Putting on his armor, he & Stane eventually come to blows in their respective armors. As nothing he did stopped Stane in his armor, he has Pepper overload the reactor, leading to a tremendous amount of energy expelling upward.  The burst of electricity caused Stane to fall inside, triggering a massive explosion of the industrial Arc Reactor & killing Stane.

News began to circulate of their battle, with Tony's alter ego being dubbed as Iron Man due to his armor. In the aftermath, Stark holds a press conference where he is to lie that Iron Man was his personal bodyguard. Though S.H.I.E.L.D. gave him an alibi for the events, Stark instead announced that he is Iron Man.​​​​​

## Romantic Relationships

* Bethany Cabe: Dated (1995)
* Christine Everhart: One Night Stand (1996)
* Lina Loveness: Dated (1996)
* Evetta Gorani: One Night Stand (1997)
* Joanna Nivena: Girlfriend (1997)
* Pepper Potts: Girlfriend (1998 - 2005); Fiancée (2005 - 2006); Wife (2006 - )

## Personality

Tony Stark is complicated. During his early days, he was a man who only cared about fame & wealth. Plagued by many vices, Stark was most prone to womanizing & pride. He had no sense of responsibility or humility, always rubbing his success in the faces of everyone he met. This all changed when he was captured by terrorists. After building the first Iron Man armor and escaping captivity, Stark realized the kind of person he really was & engaged in a life of heroism to atone for his past mistakes.

Despite this, Stark is devoted to truly make the world a better place. This desire has sometimes caused Stark to resort to morally questionable methods, as long as the end justifies them. He has been described as "man enough to do what needs to be done, even knowing full well what it will cost him." Even though he can appear to be self-obsessed, Stark could also be a reliable friend & occasionally showed affection toward his teammates.

Over the following years, Tony matured & gradually becoming more of a team player, less arrogant & not as cynical. He even began opening up & began a real relationship with Pepper Potts. His exploits as Iron Man have lead him to reevaluate his life, thus Tony now strives to use his inventions in a more responsible & considerate way. He never fully let go of his character flaws but used them to push him forward as a reminder to do better & often making self-deprecating jokes or comments. Despite this attitude, Tony is an exceptionally brave & selfless individual.

## Powers & Abilities

* **Genius Level Intellect:** Quite apart from the powers granted him by the suit, Tony Stark is far more than a mechanical engineering prodigy. With an intelligence classified as super-genius, he easily is one of the smartest people on Earth. Furthermore, this extends to his remarkable ingenuity dealing with difficult situations such as foes & deathtraps where he is capable of using his available tools, like his suit, in unorthodox & effective ways, for example when he built the first Iron Man Armor in captivity. Tony's genius allows him to act as a futurist, a person capable of intuiting the future based on current trends. This ability also extends to a much smaller scale, with Tony being capable of predicting with accuracy the way an interaction with a given individual will go down even before talking with them, a faculty that makes it really hard for human interactions to surprise him & causes him to sometimes finish other people's sentences. Tony has been mentioned by Reed Richards to be the world's best multitasker.
	+ ***Polymath*:** He is proficient in mechanical engineering, computers, business, strategy, piloting, linguistic & various scientific fields.
	+ ***Business Management*:** Stark is extremely well-respected in the business world, able to command people's attentions when he speaks on economic matters by virtue of the fact that he is savvy enough to have, over the years, built up several multi-million dollar companies from virtually nothing. He also strives to be environmentally responsible in his businesses. He states that if he wanted to, he could give away his entire fortune & build it up again within a week. Stark most notably turned his father's munitions firm into a multinational corporation that covered virtually all contemporary scientific industry when barely in his early twenties.
	+ ***Engineering*:** He is an excellent engineer & mechanic capable of fixing almost any, if not all machinery.
	+ ***Multilingualism*:** Tony can fluently speak in various languages including English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Russian & Korean. He also knows multiple Middle Eastern languages.
	+ ***Tactical Analysis*:** While a somewhat brash tactician, every so often made many split-second tactical decisions that either saved people's lives or overpowered his adversaries, though he usually had J.A.R.V.I.S. or F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s assistance. He is a brilliant tactician capable of quickly formulating battle strategies & new plans if the situation changes.
	+ ***Wealth*:** His official net worth stands on $12.4 billion.
* **Hand to Hand Combat:** Stark was trained in unarmed combat by Phil Coulson & Happy Hogan, and became quite formidable on his own without the Iron Man armor when the situation demanded it. He further refined his hand tohand combat skills & became highly skilled in martial arts by training with Captain America, Black Widow & Black Panther.
* **Firerams:** Tony knows how to handle firearms, mainly the ones he has produced.
* **Iron Man Armor:** With the exception of the Mark I Iron Man armor, almost all of the Iron Man suits shared a common design & capability set. The suit was a powered exoskeleton with armored plating, capable of enhancing the wearer's strength, speed, agility & endurance. The suit was powered by a miniaturized Arc Reactor, either using the one surgically installed in Tony Stark's chest or else built into the chest-piece of the armor itself.

### Ratings

* **Acumen:** 7 - Master / Elite
* **Might:** 4 - Trained / Learned (Tony); 6 - Expert / Advanced (Iron Man)
* **Quickness:** 4 - Trained / Learned (Tony); 6 - Expert / Advanced (Iron Man)
* **Mysticism:** 1 - Nonexistent
* **Gadgetry:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Projection:** 4 - Trained / Learned (Tony); 6 - Expert / Advanced (Iron Man)
* **Tactics:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **Battle:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **TOTAL:** 140 - Power Level 3 / General Threat (Tony Stark); 200 - Power Level 5 / Elevated Threat (Iron Man)

## Trivia

* Tony's father, Howard Stark, helped Steve Rogers become Captain America.
* His father was good friends with Nathaniel Richards, the father of Reed Richards. Because of this, they had met in their youth.
* His parents died on December 16, 1984.
* After seeing Clint & his family at their farmhouse, Tony was prompted to build the Stark Eco-Compound as a secondary & secluded residence for his family. The two houses are less than 30 minutes apart.
* He is an atheist. While he acknowledges the existence of gods, he refuses to believe in them.
* Tony is the owner of the Roswell Army Air Field, a location mistakenly associated with Area 51.
* His blood type is A positive.
* He once went to a fan convention posed as Iron Man cosplayer.
* Tony has his own Google-like search engine, called "Starkle."
* He has set up a scholarship program for aliens, dimensional travelers, clones, artificial intelligences & other students outside the norm.
* "Stark" means "strong" in several languages, including German & Swedish.
* One of his cars had the license plate STARK1. The car with the STARK2 plate was later gifted to Pepper Potts prior to their relationship.
* Stark has his own flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream called *Stark Raving Hazelnuts.*

## Notes

* The original character of Iron Man belongs to the Marvel Universe.
* His marriage to Pepper, family dynamic & the cabin house are nods to the MCU.