Babylon Project Galactic Database
Text Data Extraction Search: International Police Personnel Files
Personnel Data: STARK, Tony
SEARCH COMPLETE: OCTOBER 12, 2409

Full name: Anthony Edward Stark
Also known as: Iron Man
Species: Human
Date of birth: March 17, 1963
Place of birth: Long Island, New York, Earth
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 185 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black
Adjusted Wolfe-DeKok Intelligence Index: 220

Date of IPO Induction: June 3, 2402
Division of service: Special Assignment 0 (Weapon Zero)
Grade: Grey Lensman
Test of Light administered: April 24, 2403
Other special qualifications/certifications:

- Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, MIT (1981)
- Inventor of the Year, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1991, 1993
- Starship master's certificate, Republic of Zeta Cygni
- International Police Tactical Division PFJI (Precision Flight Jump Infantry) certification
- IPO Tac Div powered armor combat certification
- IPO Tac Div combat engineer

Description: Anthony Stark is a human male who appears to be in his mid-thirties. He is tall and fit, considered handsome for his species, and generally dresses as befits an up-and-coming industrialist in a prosperous economy. He keeps his hair in a short but not severe style and customarily wears a goatee.

Notes: Tony Stark is one of the ten Dimensionally Displaced Persons who arrived in New Avalon in the TARDIS displacement event of May 24, 2402 (see file). He comes from an alternate Earth timeline, now a severed, unreachable pocket dimension, in which a small but significant percentage of the human population of Earth possess genetic anomalies granting them metahuman or parahuman abilities. His native timeframe, from his point of displacement, is the Standard Year 1994.

Having been adventurers by training and inclination for years before their displacement, the DDPs of the 2402 incident adapted relatively easily to life in our universe. They were provided with the standard IPO initial orientation services, including paperwork processing and copies of So You've Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe, and continuing assistance with their universal acclimatizations.

Initially, Stark intended to join the technical rather than operational side of the International Police Organization, but after some discussions, he and Chief Hutchins reached the conclusion that he could be more effective if he had the broader latitude provided by working semi-covered as an agent of Weapon Zero, the IPO's covert operations branch.

To that end, Stark maintains two personae, as he did in his home reality. As Anthony Stark, the brilliant inventor, he owns and runs Stark Industries, one of the Republic of Zeta Cygni's foremost manufacturers of police and security equipment. SI provides much of the International Police's equipment aside from weapons (Frost Armaments, a division of Emma Frost's Frost Enterprises, handles most of the IPO's weapons contracts), including personal protection equipment. The Ragolian Frame-based personal armor worn by Tactical Division special troops is built under license by Stark Industries.

In public, Stark is not associated with the International Police except by his company's business relationship with the agency. While he is known to be a personal friend of the Chief (which annoys his competitors to no end), he is not known to be an actual agent of the IPO. His public persona is a wealthy, successful, and civic-minded industrialist - nothing more and nothing less.

Stark's other persona takes the stage when he dons his sophisticated suit of fusion-powered steel-mesh armor and becomes the heroic figure known to the galactic press as "the invincible Iron Man". Iron Man, ostensibly an anonymous employee of Stark Industries, serves as a combination security officer, public relations figure, and corporate icon for the firm, and as a general defender of the public good as well. Iron Man is very much associated with the International Police, though he is believed by the public to be an independent ally, not an actual agent, of the IPO.

Tony Stark is a brilliant engineer and technologist. He is not a scientist, and would be the first to point out the critical difference between science and technology. His genius lies not in discovering new principles of the universe, but in finding new applications for the discoveries of others. Such is his almost intuitive grasp of technology that within weeks of his arrival in our universe, he had assimilated enough of the local technology base to start making improvements to cutting-edge native artifacts.

That fact points out another key facet of Stark's complex character: his inherent dissatisfaction with things that are "good enough". An inventor to the bone, Stark isn't happy unless he's improving, optimizing, or completely re-thinking something. His intellectual restlessness demands constant occupation, constant novelty. He invents the way writers write or painters paint - because it's in him and it has to come out.

Coupled with this need to create, however, is a strong sense of the moral obligation that powerful new technologies carry with them. It's the reason why Stark Industries doesn't make weapons, but rather concentrates on tools and protective gear for the IPO's forces. Tony Stark can make tremendously powerful weapons - Iron Man's arsenal is proof of that - but he trusts very few people apart from himself to employ them responsibly, partly out of that sense of obligation and partly just because of his Type A "just let me do that" personality.

The Iron Man armor Stark brought with him from his own time was far ahead of its day - so far ahead that it was still impressively advanced and quite capable in this universe. Stark's need to upgrade meant that as soon as he had a sufficient grasp of local technologies, he'd started incorporating them into the suit, and before long his understanding of local overtechnology had reached the point where a completely new suit of armor was required.

The current model of the suit, officially the Stark Industries Cybernetic Combat Vehicle Mark X, is one of the most powerful battlesuits in the universe. Despite its modest size - no larger than a standard HEV-series hostile environment suit - the CCV-10, as it is known in Stark Industries internal documentation, has a higher Combat Threat Rating than any known mass-production powersuit, battlemover, or Destroid below the Assault class.

The CCV-10's armor can withstand a direct hit from a Destroid-class particle projection cannon. In addition, the suit is equipped with deflector shields comparable to those fitted to modern front-line starfighters. Cybernetically controlled fusion-turbine boot jets permit the suit to fly at atmospheric speeds exceeding Mach 2 or space combat speeds above 200 megalights. The armor's articulation and directed force fields boost the wearer's strength to near-Kryptonian levels, enabling Iron Man to lift almost 100 tons.

The CCV-10 also sports an arsenal of powerful weapons, including palm-mounted variable force beam projectors (known by the trademark name Repulsor Rays™) and a chest-mounted multiple-wavelength beam array that can be used as anything from a searchlight to a microwave communications antenna to a Destroid-grade laser cannon. In addition, a number of modular weapon attachments are available if heavy battle conditions are expected. These include a popup shoulder-fired missile launcher similar to the one found on GRF-series Griffin suits, minigun and plasma lance attachments, and a phase cloak generator.

Cutting-edge life support and communications equipment is also packed into the CCV-10's armored shell. Extensive sensor systems provide the operator with more and better information than most military command centers receive. About the only thing the CCV-10 doesn't have is FTL capability, and Stark is rumored to be working on a hyperdrive module for the inevitable CCV-11.

Two CCV-10 units are operational at this time: the one employed by Stark as Iron Man, and a second, slightly different model dubbed the Mark X Model B. The CCV-10B is almost identical in capability to the base model, but looks considerably different, and for good reason: the only operational 10B is worn by Stark Industries Vice President of Operations Virginia "Pepper" Stark, who sometimes operates as the second member of the company's fictitious "Iron Brigade", code name War Machine. There is also an undisclosed number of spare units securely emplaced at Stark Industries facilities around the galaxy - just in case.

Left: Iron Man (Anthony Stark)
Right: War Machine (Virginia "Pepper" Stark)

Tony Stark juggles his three lives - wealthy industrialist, IPO technologist, and armored hero - with apparent ease, but it is an ease born of long, often hard experience. A recovering alcoholic, Stark knows all too well how easy it is to get so caught up in one facet of one's life that the others wither from neglect, and he is careful to maintain his balance. He finds it easier nowadays than it was in his home reality; whether that has anything to do with the change of setting or is just a function of his own greater life experience, he doesn't know and doesn't care to find out.

Among those who know about his dual identity, some have dismissed his penchant for super-powered heroics as simple thrillseeking, writing him off as an adrenaline junkie, but those who really know him know there's a lot more to it than that. Underneath the Armani suits, the inventive genius and the business acumen, Tony Stark is a hero. It's as simple as that.

Some random facts:

- Has a bionic heart, one of the first truly viable pieces of full-function bionics developed in his home reality. It's the one technological artifact in his life that he's not inclined to tinker with.
- Deliberately designs Iron Man systems without many user-error-prevention systems, so that the suit's systems will be more easily adapted to unforeseen uses in the field - what old-time UNIX hackers referred to as "not preventing you from doing stupid things because that would prevent you from doing clever things."
- Was a notorious playboy in his native universe, but settled down right quick in ours for some reason. [Must just never have met the right girl back home... -V-]
- Made his first fortune in our world with the patent for the MX-3075 - the component that tripled starship electroplasma systems' efficiency and made the IPO's Next Generation Starship project possible.

Current assignment: As a member of Weapon Zero, Tony Stark publicly runs Stark Industries and secretly operates as Iron Man, frequently collaborating with but not visibly part of the International Police.

End of Text Data Extract
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