Mods for a non-violent playthrough?

[InDarkestNight]

You can't seemingly do anything in Skyrim that doesn't involve killing. At least though you can progress through the tutorial dungeon without slaying anything yourself; in Oblivion you were completely alone through most of the sequence, so no npcs to do the dirty work for you.

I've heard of people playing this game as a merchant. They don't do dungeons or such; they just interact with merchants and try to accumulate money, buy houses and such you know. I don't see how that would be too engaging though. There's Trade Routes and Supply and Demand, but does that really add any more interactivity to the system?

The reason I'm asking IS IMPORTANT. My dog just passed. I've had an excessive number of deaths in my family. It started with my abusive father, which I still mourned despite how he treated me. Then both my grandparents. My father's horse, that horse's mother. Two dogs, a cat. Some of my sister's animals, including another dog at least two kittens and a pet possum (seriously, turns out you can't return them to the wild once you've sheltered them but you can turn them into pets! that one didn't live to see adulthood though, sad).

I've already grieved, don't get me wrong. Funny enough, I was doing so while my dog was in hospital. Her death seems to have hit me particularly hard. I had no contact with my father anymore when he passed; the last time I saw him alive was a full year prior. I didn't know most of my sister's animals. Our grandparents weren't really a part of our lives growing up. None of these really affected how we lived. This changed with the mother horse. It was weird for the longest time not having to go out to feed her three times a day. Even after she passed, I had a thought once that I had forgotten to feed her. A few hours later, I had a thought that she might be cold (she died in winter). This dog was essentially my best friend though; I was more than her caretaker. The horse was technically my mother's. I'll no longer go out to feed her, or give her water, or play with, never will I again get to say to her face 'you're a good girl', or 'I love you'.

Sorry, point I'm trying to make is; I'm tired of treating death so trivially. I never liked it after I experienced a death, but now I think I want to make that permanent. In particular I'm thinking of making a mod that makes all dogs invulnerable, so I never have to experience the loss of a dog ever again. I may do the same for horses; I did download a mod shortly after the mother horse's passing that let you pet them. It was deleted soon after being uploaded sadly. I didn't even get to endorse it. That mod truly meant something to me. Of course, this isn't all that new; ever since the human deaths in my family I don't like using 'memento mori' decorations for halloween. Cartoony sheet ghosts are fine, but skeletons and graves are not. Death does change you.

Of course, non-violent games are rare, and I certainly don't have too many. I wish I could keep playing Skyrim. What must I do? Play a merchant but use calm spells so I never have to engage in combat again?

Yeah, npcs aren't real and they never truly die; they all return to their original state when you make a new character. Also, due to the low variety of faces among bandits and forsworn, I've started to actually recognize most of them. I've even started to give them names; the one nord bandit that shares his face with Erikur and a few other npcs I've taken to calling Erikur. Of course, I was thinking of trying to find a mod for LE that increases the diversity of faces, but oh well.

What mods could I use to turn this into a non-violent game? I mentioned Trade Routs and Supply and Demand. Alternate Start would let you completely skip the intro dungeon. Do I need to just play a merchant who abuses calm spells just to avoid combat? I know its possible to turn off the combat AI through console commands, but I've only ever used that for testing. Does that persist through saves? I don't know.

[BlazeStryker]

Knockout mods, Boinking mods, enhanced invisibility. some quests call for the killing of a bandit/reaver leader, but the common thugs can be spared.