Does observer runs in the background or frontend

I am trying to understand about the events and observers in magento.

I created an observer to listen to an event in the checkout page. I have configured it and it triggers after the place order button is pressed.

My doubt is the observer running in background or in foreground?

Note : I saw that the error in the observer stops the order execution.

One more question I have:

If it runs in foreground, what if I have more than one observer which configured to use the same event. What will be the order of execution?