Role Playing and Mod Suggestions for a (possibly not so) ordinary life in Skyrim

I'm planing on starting another Skyrim playthrough and whenever I do that, I usually make up an elaborate plan of what I want the story of my character to be. This may sound very limiting to some, but a lot of the fun for me comes from coming up with the story beforehand and improvising when things don't go as planed and I have to change plans mid playthrough. Sorry in advance, this will probably be a long post, I'll try to stay as concise as possible.

TLDR: I can't decide what I want the early game for my next playthrough to be, the list bellow has some ideas, but I'd love to hear some feedback and suggestions.

For this next character I already have something in mind, would like to get some feedback or suggestions from other people. The overall idea for the character progression is to start out as a more or less ordinary citizen of Skyrim (who is not the Dragonborn) with the ambition to join the College of Winterhold and become an illusion mage (The collage days mod makes the entry rather expensive so I won't be able to go there right away). However at some point (probably after being part of the college for a while) he/she will be enslaved by vampires (Death alternative mod) and contract vampirism. After escaping from their layer he/she will then join the Dark Brotherhood and I'll see where it goes from there.

Now I have the latter parts figured out pretty well, but I can't decide what I want my early game to be, this is the part I need some help with. I've considered the following options:

Starting Location: I've narrowed it down to either Solitude, Windhelm or possibly Markarth (or a settlement close to either), though for the latter I can't remember how easy it is to avoid the forsworn questline. The other cities either don't offer much to do in them early game, don't fit thematically or I've seen to many times in previous playthroughs.

Starting Occupation: This is the more interesting part, I've though of the following

• Being a Hunter. I could install the Hunterborn mod and make an early living as a Hunter, until I can afford the college tuition. This would also make for a neat character development detail, going from hunting animals to hunting people, after joining the Brotherhood.
• Being/Becoming a blade for hire. I'm not sure if there are many mods for this playstyle, but I could start off by doing some radiant quests and earning the money through bounties (Even though it would require some suspension of disbelief to accept that someone who just started doing mercenary work would be able to clear out a whole bandit camps)
• Being an Archiologist. Just exploring around, looking for old ruins and looting them for any valuables to sell. This might mesh well with a Markarth start
• Being a Dunmer refugee. Pretty self explanatory, starting out as a poor Dunmer in the Windhelm region. This won't be enough on it's own though, I'd probably combine it with one of the above.
• Being a Vigilant of Stendarr. Probably the same as playing a merc, except with some thematic flavor and preference for undead dungeons. Would also make becoming a vampire a more impactfull character moment.
• Doing regular Jobs. Having the Jobs of Skyrim mod installed, allows me to do a lot of regular jobs like being a courier or blacksmith. This won't be very interesting for long, but I would probably combine it with one of the above. Doing an internship at a Smithy would help get some levels in blacksmithing that'll need later to craft some of the armors I'd like to use.
• If all else fails I can always just got for the good old "Adventurer" archetype, just doing whatever and helping whoever to get by, though that sounds a little bland.

If anybody has something to add to any of those or a new idea entirely, shoot it at me. The main idea is to start out as someone quite ordinary to make the switch to powerful mage/vampire more interesting.

Cheers