I'm working on a dungeon crawl mod for Morrowind and I want to animate a stone golem in the shape of Molag Bal. I want to use a Mantella type devise to power it, but I am unsure how lore correct such a devise would be. Could such a thing be created by some mortal and could another mortal soul be used to power a construct?

The Mantella was famous because it 1) powered the numidium! 2) contained the soul of now-legendary battlemage. Correct me if I'm wrong

Vaguely, it was a really powerful soul gem. Kind of like the grand soulgems used to build the player's Telvanni Stronghold. So I think you can totally go that direction; capture someone's soul

OK, very cool! Now to play Frankenstein and bring my monster to life!

I don't think so. Well, maybe, but... the special thing about the Mantella wasn't just that it was some badass battle-mage's soul, it was that that battle-mage was part of the enantiomorph that mimicked Lorkhan at Convention and the Mantella was a stand-in for the Heart of Lorkhan, Zero Stone, an object of supreme cosmological/geo-mythical importance.

For his purposes, he doesn't need mythic Mantella, just a really powerful soulgem.

Ah, glad I said "maybe" then.

I think the significance of the Mantella was that it held the soul of a Shezarrine, Wulfharth. As the Numidium was designed to run using the Mundus-friendly power of the Heart of Lorkhan. Arctus' soul was just an added bonus. If another Shezarrine was bound to a soulgem, I think a similar device could occur. That said, the2crow may be right in that the Mantella was unique in that the events of its binding contained a concoction of enantiomorphic circumstances that trapped in it not just the soul of a Shezarrine, but of a mantled stand-in for Shezarr himself.