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I'm starting a new adventuring group with my friends. I live in a fantasy world with predictable levels of danger in certain areas. We're part of an adventuring guild. Everyone in our group has a different "role", and each person in the group is theoretically replaceable. We're splitting the profits as evenly as we can.

We can accept quests from any town, but most quests, we've found, are located a day's travel or further away from one. We don't have horses, for monetary reasons, hence our long travel time and being forced to carry our belongings on us.

The problem is when we're about to enter a dangerous situation, where one or more of us could be left behind. Ideally, we only want to bring the items that are necessary with us into these situations, but we don't have a good place to store the items and money. We could split them between ourselves, but then if someone gets left behind, then as a group we lose that portion of our loot as well.

Why not use a bank of some kind? Or create a home base? Well, because the quest locations are spread so far out, if we were to store things in one place it's likely we would often need them in another. A day's travel or more just to get the items we need is a PITA.

With all of that in mind, what can we do with our valuables before entering a dangerous situation? Can you help my adventuring party solve this logistical nightmare?

Note: Obviously, storing our valuables needs to be in a way that someone else can't just come along and find them and take them for themselves. We trust each other, but quests are public information, so leaving our stuff lying around is just asking to have it be stolen.

Note: Magic exists in our world. In fact, we currently have two mages in our group (a damage dealer and a healer). However, our spells are simplistic and tend to be solely in those two categories. Enchanted items are also very uncommon and tend to be expensive (usually out of our price range). We would prefer answers without magic, if possible.

Note: Tag help is appreciated.

The usual trick is to hide it. Stick it in the bushes, in a backpack up a tree or just bury it.

Unless you're being spied up at the exact time, chances are nobody would ever find it.

If you bring magic into it, you then can make it invisible, use portable secure shelters or extra dimensional spaces and even magical guard creatures.

Delegate the task of logistics and safeguarding items for the group to an outside individual or individuals that are not expected to enter dangerous situations.

They would travel with the group, and would be in charge of things outside of simply carrying stuff, such as cooking, setting up camp at night, stuff like that. However they would stay in a safe location outside of the confrontation area in dangerous situations. This doesn't mean that they are unskilled in combat though. If someone attacks your stuff while your main group is away, someone needs to protect and/or move your stuff.

As for why they would do all these menial tasks for you, they would recieve their share of the reward as any other member of the group would upon completion of the task.

Dig a hole

If you have a shovel, it doesn't take too long. If you have a nice burlap sack, your stuff won't get dirty in a day or two. As long as there is nothing that smells good to badgers in the hole, no one will disturb it.

Leave someone outside

Do you have someone who couldn't make the raid? Then he/she is hanging out, right outside the instance, with all your loot.

Hire a lackey

Honestly, if you have that much stuff to truck around, hire a man to do the job for you. This (honest?) fellow can be left in the nearest settlement while you enter the Dungeon of Earnest Regret.

Hire (buy) a donkey

Much like hiring a lackey, except it is acceptable to tie the lackey/donkey to a tree to ensure he/it doesn't go anywhere.

• Buy a manor and appoint a steward. After all, real estate is the only real worth. If they are not yet that rich (you mentioned the inability to afford horses), start small and buy a peasant hut. Then buy another.


• Ask mum and dad to safeguard it. For that matter, a dutiful child would give a large percentage of their loot to their family.


• 
  Breaking the fourth wall, it is difficult to get all the players together for each session. So turn that into an advantage. The guy/gal who has to study for an exam or babysit younger relatives is always "guarding the baggage." It is a genre convention that these "zombie player characters" will not be attacked by NPCs while they keep out of the action. Everybody wins.