i just modded the fuck out of it so it was a huge grind. you weren't special, you weren't the dragonborn, just some rando fresh off the boat in the northern city i forget the name of. freezing to death without firewood and doing odd jobs to get enough food to live another day.
then somehow i mashed some more mods into that so eventually you could grind you way up to establishing a mercenary company and take over an outpost for your HQ.
god i wish it was so long ago. like before the special edition and x64. the list is probalbly on a hard drive that no longer exists
every so often i've thought of trying to recreate it but talk myself out of it.
only thing i remember vaguely is using alternate start mods, no dragonborn, a bunch of survival mods, one of the more popular difficulty enhancement mods, etc.