Dessarin Valley
Dessarin Valley is just to the northeast of Waterdeep, a fertile farmland surrounding the Dessarin River. The valley is Waterdeep's breadbasket, supplying the city with most of its food, and it is also a sparsely settled, underdefended region dependent upon Waterdeep's army and adventurer economy for defense. The major towns all lie along the Long Road to Luruar and the Savage Frontier (most notably the Neverwinter periphery). Amphail is a playground for Waterdhavian nobles where they carry out their squabbles and intrigue from within their summer homes. Yartar and Triboar were more heavily defended than most of Dessarin Valley, situated as they were at its frontier and in particular Triboar, which was often used to meet orcish invasions from the Sword Mountains, while towns like Red Larch are badly undermanned.
The entire region is plagued by primordial unrest caused by the hidden cults of Elemental Evil. These cults (knowingly or not) seek to reduce the entire world to a churning, elemental chaos of pure fire, earth, water, and air, constantly clashing against each other and never settling or combining. As this state of affairs would be inhospitable to say the least, aligning with Elemental Evil is not really an option for any sphere of influence. However, anyone who can provide Dessarin Valley protection from Elemental Evil may be able to peel them away from Waterdeep's sphere of influence, or at least pull them from the center to the periphery, particularly if they can provide similar protection against the Sword Mountain orcs (and the Kryptgarden goblinoids, if they ever start doing anything).
Dessarin also has a small population of Uthgardt barbarians who might be used to seize Dessarin from the locals, or the Sword Mountain orcs or Zartruss clan from Kryptgarden. The trouble with this approach is that any attack on the Dessarin Valley is undoubtedly going to be treated as an attack on Waterdeep, which means seizing the valley would inevitably lead to a full blown war against a major power on the Sword Coast. A sphere of influence not ready for that would find all their gains in the region reversed as soon as Waterdeep's Guard reclaimed the region.
Another option is to make alliance with nobles in Amphail who have been on the losing end of Waterdhavian politics and then re-establish their political sway in the city to the point where they can prevent retaliation by the Waterdeep Guard against anyone trying to take over the Dessarin Valley. The only way they could possibly convince the masked lords to keep the Waterdeep Guard at home, however, is if the valley continues to supply Waterdeep with food, which means the valley cannot be peeled all the way out of Waterdeep's sphere of influence using this method. Still, having Dessarin Valley on the party's side would be very helpful to political maneuvering in Waterdeep itself, and could be useful for a strategy of overthrowing the masked lords from within the city.
Further Reading
Dessarin Valley features quite prominently in Princes of the Apocalypse, which could be used as the basis for bringing the region into a sphere of influence, though you might want to cut it down a bit if you intend it to be one small part of a sphere of influence campaign, as Dessarin Valley would not be secured until around level 15 if used as-written.
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