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I'd like to spur a little bit of discussion here on a theme that I have always had difficulty settling on, as I can see both sides very well but am unsure on how to settle.

The theme or central idea is corruption. The changing of good to evil or the breakdown from paragon of control to self-destructive excess.

The question I have is what people think is the most effective path of this theme. Let me explain...

As I see it there are a few flavors of corruption. You've got the slow-burning kind, the kind that causes many small changes over a very long stretch of time until the end of it where the step from hero to villain is something that doesn't feel like a big change. This has a nice effect of present the reader with a consistent arc, and when the shift from falling good guy to full time bad guy happens, the audience feels like it is a natural and reasonable thing to have happened. On the other hand, to make the slow corruption theme work, you need to jump through a lot of hoops with your setting and characters. After all, in a slow fall, eventually someone is going to notice this path before the one being corrupted, what is it that stops them from diverting the corruption or acting to nip it in the bud? If it is WILLING corruption (i.e. the one being corrupted wanted it) they might try to hide it, but if it is UNWILLING corruption, that puts a big spanner in the works.

On the other hand, there's also the concept of instant corruption. A MacGuffin that is so intensely and singularly evil that the mere act of touch/taking/doing it is enough to cause a character to completely, and instantly fall. The strength of this is that when it happens, even foreshadowed properly, the depths and strength of the fall make for a shocking scene and a stark reminder of the irreversibility of such things. Plus you avoid the issue of the first kind, where the corrupting character should have something intervene. On the other hand, it is a very blunt force tool, and using instant corruption can easily draw calls of BS from the audience.

So what do you guys think? Slow or fast? Willing or unwilling? What's the best mix in your opinion?

Slow is better in my opinion, because chaos is powered by thoughts and emotions. For it to take unwilling followers ruins the point.

I've actually got to thinking about corruption as something that could be defined along three measures:

Fast vs Slow - This is the speed of the corruption, natch. The difference between a single mistake leading to a shocking turn as the character does such an evil that it permanently alters them, or the end result of long pressure to go to evil (either by a slow influx of evil, or the pressures of society or setting).

Willing vs Unwilling - If and when the corruption is noticed, how does the character react to it? Does he realize the extent of the evil before him, and the consequences that they entail? And, more to the point, is he happy to embrace those results? Or is he dragged slowly into it, doing all he can to claw back, even if those actions continue to push him down the wrong path.

Inherent Evil vs Innocence - Does the character have the seed of evil in him before the corruption begins?

Slow and unwilling are my preference, those are the bits that I enjoy, not so much whether their evil was inherent or not.

The entourage of characters fulfilling these criteria, like you said, probably notice. But Chaos likes to spread, and at least appear benevolent until it's roots dig deep. The entourage of the corrupted would likely find their actions to be some sort of necessary sacrifice until they will were passed the event horizon of being irrevocably damned.

And by then there's probably a good chance the people who've been with him have already taken a few steps down the road the corrupted has.

Chaos does not need your permission. Even Primarchs have crumbled under its onslaught. The image of instant corruption certainly belongs in 40k; however, resistance to it can be a good way to measure strength. Chaos desecrates the body, the mind, and the soul. Try to imagine how each of these elements in a given character might react to Warp-corruption, more quickly or slowly. Purity of soul does not always go hand in hand with a mighty physique or vice versa; the CSM for example may survive relatively in-tact, physically speaking, for centuries even as their minds accumulate psychoses and their souls sink into degeneracy.