Anthony "Tony" Stark was born Absalom, to Howard and Maria Stark. In his youth, Tony Stark was a precociously intelligent young boy. When Tony was 7 he was sent to a boarding school, and during this experience he found people difficult to relate to. This was when learned about the Absalom nobility, geography, history, and arcana, but he was most intrigued by engineering. By the age of 15 Tony had enrolled in the Baxter Academy for Arcane Learning, where he graduated four years later at the top of his class at age 19 with a degree in arcanotechnology.
At the age of 21, his parents were tragically killed in an alchemical accident that devoured their mansion. With his house destroyed, Tony spent nearly all of his time at the inherited Stark Industries, an unparalleled mega-conglomerate that mostly manufactured weapons for the Absalom military. One of his first projects as the new CEO was to purchase the manufacturer who designed the alchemical project that seemingly killed his parents, and redesigned it in order to prevent any further incidents, thus saving lives. Having no interest in the day-to-day business of his company, Tony promoted his secretary Pepper Potts to be his executive assistant and left the majority of his workload on her so that he could avoid what he saw as a burden.
During the war with Doomstadt, Stark was demonstrating a new energy cannon for the military when his convoy was attacked by a Doomstadt strike force team, wielding Stark Industry weapons. During this attack, one of the Doomstadt soldiers threw a Stark grenade that lodged shrapnel near Tony’s heart. Unconscious, Tony was transported to the Doomstadt camp where he was held captive by a local Orc warlord named Wong-Chu, and forced under threat of death to create a doomsday weapon for him with another captive, the famed arcanotechnologist, Yin Sen. Because the shrapnel was going to enter his heart and kill him, Wong-Chu promised Stark his freedom and the healing required to save his life if he and Yin Sen could create the weapon within a week. Suspicious of the warlord’s promise, the scientists instead worked on a way to escape and save Tony’s life. The result was an arc reactor which combined an intricate piece of technology with an outsider (an eidolon) named Jarvis, which kept the shrapnel away from his heart. With this power source, Stark developed a suit of armor to escape captivity. Donning the suit and having it power up was a time consuming process, but Yin Sen sacrificed himself to provide enough time for Stark to completely power up the suit. Stark took on the warlord and his men and avenged Yin Sen's death, thus Iron Man was born.
Since returning to Absalom, Tony has turned the focus of Stark Industries from weapons to medical supplies and energy sources, having realized that despite his best intentions at keeping his weapons only in Absalomese hands, they were bound to fall into darker hands as well. Since the shift, Stark has taken up a keen interest in the company again, and has devoted significant resources into a private department which he runs. Since the public doesn’t know that Stark is Iron Man, this R&D is kept in private.
