War and Famine Location in Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse (Organ Puzzle)

War and Famine is a pair of Legendary dual swords in Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse. You won’t find it in a chest. It sits on an altar in a hidden room under the Great Organ Room in Notre-Dame, and the only way in is to play the Giant Organ correctly. The correct melody is different in every playthrough, so you have to read the solution from your own game before you play it.

Quick answer: In the Stained Glass Gallery, count the candles under each zodiac window. Then step on the matching Giant Organ keys from fewest candles to most, go through the left passage, and pull the lever.

Where War and Famine is in Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame belongs to the Dracula’s Castle part of the world map. The weapon is in the Great Organ Room district, which you can find on the map by its Giant Organ marker. You can see the room from the start, but the altar is in a basement below it. That basement only opens after the organ is solved. A DEF UP book is in the same district, so you can pick it up on the same trip.

Rose stands on a stone rampart facing a kneeling armored Joan before a burning cathedral, with Rose's dialogue box below. — Rose speaks with Joan on a rampart before a burning Notre-Dame: “Joan of Arc? The warrior who stood against the English? But you were taken prisoner and burned at”

Close to the organ, an inscription warns that the order’s greatest sin lies beneath the stairs. That is a hint about where the reward is. It is not the code. The code is in another room.

Reading the organ code in the Stained Glass Gallery

The Stained Glass Gallery is marked on the Notre-Dame map. At first it looks like an empty room. Two details in it give you the whole solution.

Rose speaks in a dialogue box while Joan stands in armor on a rampart beside a planted sword, with fire and a cathedral behind. — Rose introduces herself as Rose Belmont and asks Joan for her key while the two stand on the rampart before burning Notre-Dame.

Each window has a zodiac sign at the top.
Candles burn at the bottom of every window, with the number ranging from one to nine.
The candle counts change between playthroughs, so a code copied from someone else’s game will not work in yours.
The organ keys use the same zodiac signs as the windows. That is how you match a window to a key.

Write down every sign together with its candle count. Then sort the list from the lowest count to the highest. The sorted list is the order in which you press the keys.

Make the list before you leave the gallery. A wrong key resets the whole melody, so guessing from memory costs time.

How to get War and Famine from the Giant Organ

Go back to the Great Organ Room and stand at the Giant Organ. Each key is a floor pad marked with a zodiac symbol, and you play it by landing on it.

Step on the key for the window with one candle, then the key for two candles, and continue upward until you have played every sign on your list. There is no time limit, so you can go slowly. If you hit a wrong key, start again from the first note.

Solving the Organ Puzzle — The Giant Organ's zodiac keys. Play them in order of the candle counts from your Stained Glass Gallery. Shown at 00:31 in Ghosts of Reykjavik’s video. Image: KONAMI

Look at the left side of the room. When the melody is correct, the green energy barrier on the far left drops and a doorway opens. If the barrier is still up, the sequence was wrong.

Go through the left doorway and climb the stairs to a glowing lever. Interact with the lever (RB on an Xbox controller) to open a trapdoor in the floor.

Map Check & Entry — The Great Organ Room on the map. The new passage leads left out of the organ chamber. Shown at 00:27 in Ghosts of Reykjavik’s video. Image: KONAMI

Drop through the open hatch into the basement. Head right, sliding through the low crawl spaces under the vaulted stone corridors.

Continue to the right until you arrive at the altar at the far end. Interact with it to obtain War and Famine.

You’ll know it worked when the War and Famine weapon card opens with a Legendary tag and an option to equip it. If you hold the equip button there, the swords go straight into Rose’s hands. On the map, the altar is the underground room just below the organ chamber.

Collecting War and Famine — The War and Famine pickup card, which confirms the weapon is yours and can be equipped. Shown at 00:58 in Ghosts of Reykjavik’s video. Image: KONAMI

War and Famine stats and combo

Stat	Value
Weapon type	Dual swords
Rarity	Legendary
Tier	4
ATK	100
Attack power	33
Stagger power	30
Mana per hit	2
Combo finisher	Blade Flurry

Blade Flurry depends on good timing. After each attack connects, press Attack again to keep the combo going. The chain’s final strike creates a ground zone that boosts you for as long as it remains. According to the lore, Death stole these swords from the armory of the Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen and used them to equip Dracula’s strongest lieutenants.

Great Organ Room and Notre-Dame reference

The organ room holds more than the swords. Use this table to check what else is in the district while you’re there.

Great Organ Room	Value
Area	Notre-Dame
Items	DEF UP book, War and Famine
Secret areas	3
Breakable walls	1
Clue	Melody Sheet for the Fugue of Notre-Dame

Melody sheets also appear in two other Notre-Dame districts. If you’re collecting clues, these are the places to look.

District	Clue	Other notes
Sealed Scriptorium	Melody Sheet for the Sonata of Notre-Dame	1 secret area
Great Organ Room	Melody Sheet for the Fugue of Notre-Dame	3 secret areas
La Flèche	Melody Sheet for the Concerto of Notre-Dame	Brave Heart Fragment

Here is what the whole Notre-Dame area contains, so you can track your completion progress. The area counts 235 completion items in total. These include 4 ATK books, 3 DEF books, 19 XP statues worth 300 XP each, 3 Wise Heart Fragments, 3 Brave Heart Fragments, and 3 Mirrors of Life. Its bosses are Arthur, Death, Doppelganger and Joan. War and Famine is one of the 17 items that count toward completing the area.

Dialogue scene with Joan's portrait below a fiery, ruined city and cathedral, a sword planted on a rampart and a small hero standing nearby. — Joan speaks on a burning rampart before Notre-Dame, saying she patrolled the streets and rooftops and imagines someone else watches the cemetery and its undercroft.