Mud terrain should follow the same rules as lava regarding stuck in it and sinking in, except without the fire damage or eventual death (you can’t get submerged completely in it). Also, you can apply a towel to it repeatedly to suck out the water, which dries it up into normal floor, producing the message “Your towel gets filthy!”

It should appear starting in the early-to-mid Dungeons of Doom, so that monsters like giants can smack you into it and get you stuck.

Artifact towel that acts as a magic carpet: invoke it to start flying on it. Doesn’t work if you’re currently wearing the towel, and trying to wear the towel either doesn’t work or ends any flight.

You can rub a towel on a greased item to remove the grease from it, just like wiping your face.

You can wear a second towel on top of an existing one. This makes you deaf as well as blind.

Artifact whose main purpose is to soak up water and apply it to other things. It removes a pool or moat square or dries up a fountain when applied to one (moats may refill), gaining a charge each time. You can apply it to spend a charge blanking a scroll, erasing an engraving (any type, not just dust), cleaning your face or hands, and extinguish fiery monsters such as a flaming sphere (possibly instakilling them).

The initial idea was to create a “sponge” object as the base item type, but since it’s undesirable to make a new object just to be the base of an artifact, it could instead either be a “spongestone” gem, or just an artifact towel, since towels can already soak up water. (If implemented as a towel, the towel would only gain one charge of wetness when immersed in water, and could attempt to dry up that square immediately.)

Bump the weight of towels up to 5; they have a lot more cloth than a blindfold and should not weigh the same as one.

A moist towel in your inventory prevents scrolls from being burnt up.

If you have a silver non-reflection shield, a towel, and grease, you can turn it into a shield of reflection by polishing it.

If you sit on a towel, give the YAFM “It’s probably not a good time for a picnic…”

You can apply a towel to remove grease from items if your face and hands are already clean when you apply it.

You can polish metallic shields by rubbing a towel on them. While it is polished and erosion-free, it provides reflection; but once it gets hit with some form of erosion it loses its polish and can’t be polished unless the erosion is removed.