Every alien race has its own strengths, weaknesses, and IRSC (Interstellar Relative Sapience Code, with lower numbers favorable).

At sea, the Captain rescued a man floating in the ocean, described as having a "leathery, greenish, reptilian hide" due to sunburn and a "swollen contusion", "yellow and filmed with slime" on his forehead.

Although he survives, his mind is damaged due to the oxygen deprivation, and he spends the rest of his life locked in his room (which later became Barney's bedroom), scratching patterns into the wooden walls and clinging to the strange trinket he had taken from the murdered man's corpse.

He finds a small, silver, round object: There was a face carved in this side, nothing but a rigid, slightly smiling mouth under a single wide-open eye... Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive.

And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary gaping eye, that made the face so repellent.

As Barney hurries to select his weapons and equipment before a horde of aliens descends on his cottage, he makes the startling discovery that he shares a psychic link to the Piggy.

Minutes before his home is destroyed, Barney concocts a plan to pass the Piggy off to another player convincingly enough so that it won't arouse suspicion.

However, whether or not this applies outside the game is unclear; Barney exhibits superior critical thinking skills when fighting the aliens, even though they have lower IRSCs.