PrePub - Ascendance of a Bookworm

The issue is the delivery mechanism. Any poison that needs to be injected or come in contact with skin, would need to hit the unprotected hands or face to have any effect. Some kind of liquid spray, airborn powder or gas would probably have much better chances to work than spikes or somesuch.

Unless of course they set up traps in a place were Georgine or her subordinates are likely to still be wearing the silver cloth... so right outside, or inside the book room's barrier would make a perfect spot for such a trap... but the problem here is how to make the trigger, without endangering the regular denizens of the temple.

A magical trigger is out of the question, since the silver cloth would make the intruder effectively invisible to that. But designing a physical trigger that only works on intruders and can't be set off by the blue and grey priests is out of the question with their level of technology. Informing the people with access to the book room of how to not trigger the trap is an option, but still risks accidents and opens everything up to being leaked to Georgine's faction, whether by accident, spy or being forced by intriders. Not to mention that Sylvester has a vested interest in keeping the very existence of the door a secret, so the fewer people to know about there being anything worth trapping in the book room the better.

Or maybe not... if they could make a magical trigger that works like a real-life light barrier, that might work. The silver cloth blocks magic, so if you made a two-part sensor, with one part emitting a constant, low-level emission of some kind and a recipient that triggers the moment the emission from the other part stops, that should still work on silver cloth protected people. Now you'd only need to also give it the ability to sense the passing through of people authorized to enter the book room, and it'd be perfectly safe, if set up just inside the barrier.