The beginning of Dawnguard is rather iconic. You go into a town and get approached by this Orc wearing strange armor. "You there. The Dawnguard is looking for anyone willing to fight against the growing vampire menace. What do you say?"

Wait, what growing vampire menace? In the original release of Dawnguard, this was shown by vampires randomly attacking towns at night. However, with the release of Special Edition, Bethesda disabled these by default due to how often they'd result in NPCs in towns committing suicide by Ancient Undying Master Vampire wielding The Throngler. The original dialogue about a "growing vampire menace" remained unchanged, though, which I always felt was odd. There is one quest in vanilla that portrays vampires as a looming threat, however...

With this mod, the quest "Laid to Rest" is now a prerequisite to starting Dawnguard. If you've never done this quest before, or simply don't recall it, it's a side quest in Morthal revolving around you figuring out the story behind a burned-down house, which leads to you uncovering an insidious plot by vampires to enthrall the entire town for their own nefarious purposes. It's a pretty neat little side quest and I think narratively, it makes sense to have it lead up to Dawnguard. It doesn't change the minimum level requirement, making it compatible with Timing is Everything or other similar mods.

Undeath is one of my favorite quest mods. It involves hunting down a group of necromancers seeking to perform a forbidden ritual, and takes you across Skyrim and even beyond. You can either stop the necromancers' plans and prevent their ritual, or you can swoop in and finish it for yourself, granting you the ability to become a lich. All around, it's a good time, but I felt like there should be more buildup to starting the questline. You start it automatically just by reaching level 30, and if you have Classical Lichdom, you can choose an "immersive start" option which adds a letter to Markarth's inn to start the initial quest... But I still feel this is lacking.

With this mod, now you'll have to have dealt with necromancers beforehand. Two side quests involve necromancy in Skyrim, those being "Blood on the Ice" and "The Wolf Queen Awakened." Blood on the Ice is a murder mystery quest in Windhelm where you obtain the Necromancer's Amulet, the legendary artifact made by Mannimarco. The Wolf Queen Awakened involves you delving deep beneath Solitude to stop the resurrected Wolf Queen, Potema, a feared and powerful necromancer. Narratively, I think it makes sense to have these quests lead up to Undeath's questline.

This file requires Classical Lichdom (although really, if you're using Undeath in your modlist, you should have it anyway), due to it adding a story manager quest node (which I hijacked for this). There's two versions, one that preserves the original level 30 requirement to start, and one that removes it. It doesn't touch anything related to the Immersive start option (which I would highly recommend having enabled anyhow), so no worries about the quest immediately starting after finishing the two prerequisite quests.

I love Wyrmstooth. It's such a good new lands mod and fits into the vanilla game really well. You work with Lurius Liore, a high-ranking member of the East Empire Company... But I always thought it was odd how they just randomly know about you despite never working with them before. Fortunately, there's a side quest in vanilla that fits the bill perfectly, "Rise in the East," a quest where you help the EEC in Windhelm deal with pirate attacks jeopardizing their business. This file makes that quest a prerequisite in addition to the MQ prerequisite option you can set in Wyrmstooth's MCM.

Thanks to Jelidity for making this plugin and giving me permission to release it here. Check out her mods, she does a lot of stellar work.