Don't I have to be Swordsage 3 before I qualify to learn the Assassin's Stance stance? Or am I misreading something?
Racial HD count for half initiator level too.
That is a little questionable though.
In the "essence of evil" online adventure, page 28, one of the foes, a ken-li swordsage has mostly low lv maneuvers similar to those a normal swordsage would have taken. Whether the designer intentionally believed that racial HD shouldn't improve IL, overlooked this altogether or was simply too lazy to optimize his maneuver selection is up in the air though.
His IL is also listed as 6, despite having 12 racial HD and 6 lvs of swordsage.